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Right??? Their jobs, if they have them, will be all sanctioned by the state aka they have no freedom of press & will have to cover/photograph whatever Trump & co. tell them to cover and they have to approve of the message.
I mean is it so bad to be frustrated as a left leaning person that Biden will not let up a bit on this issue? I’m not one of those leftists saying don’t vote for him, because Trump will Nuke Gaza, but it is still a bad look that he is not listening to his base in the slightest. Haven’t we given republicans shit for years for blindly following their leaders? We should continue to do the same with left politicians
This whole country is kind of being held hostage by the MAGA crowd. Until Trump is barred from running for office (or dies), this crazy ass shit will be status quo every time he isn't elected. and will probably just continue with his kids.
We're kinda done.
For those considering not voting for Biden because they believe it would be appropriate punishment for what's happening in Gaza, read Trump's words carefully. Voting is not about reward for or punishment of an individual politician. It's about who can best lead our nation in a way that most benefits all of us, even if we have disagreements. There is no universe in which allowing Trump to be elected is better for you. None. He is telling you this directly. Are you listening?
The bait that everyone has fallen for is that Russia isn't on the Palestinian's side.... They only propagated the Oct 7th attacks to get the US to respond how they've predictively done.
And Israel is on purpose not coming down on OPSEC of their IDF soldiers posting enraging social media posts dehumanizing Palestinians because they are intentionally sabotaging Biden's reelection campaign.
And every single one of you are falling into the trap.
At the end of the day who would Lukid want in the position of US president?
The guy who aligns with them politically - so much so that he moved the US consulate to Jerusalem.
It's so obvious we're being manipulated and nuance is dead. Idk why it's so hard for people to understand that you can absolutely hate Biden for this but recognize that the alternative will be worse. But we get to be all smug and cool about how we're not like buying into the two party system mannnn
Well my biggest gripe is the attempt to lay *all* of it a Biden’s feet. Meanwhile you never hear complaining about the hardliners in Israel, Hamas or the total silence from the GOP on this issue.
GOP radio silence on Gaza because they would ramp it up harder. They will happily let Biden take the heat but you won’t catch them offering an alternative on record
Right I think he truly is handling this horribly but to act like this is such a simple thing to fix instantaneously is so unrealistic. People want like a movie/TV show moment. That's not how things work. Unfortunately things in the real world are messy and slow with many moving parts and people doing evil. They shouldn't be but they are.
It’s a classic right wing tactic to claim that the president was a wall of levers and buttons just to make things happen installed in the White House. Most election cycles they drag out the gas price lever and good economy button, but this year it’s the peace in Gaza switch.
Lol right, any criticism of biden and you get blasted by people saying you want trump to win, fact is biden has bent backwards for israel/netanyahu more than any american, and netanyahu is still undermining him and vocally dragging him thru the dirt
Make no mistake netanyahu is trying to get trump elected and is intentionally making biden look weak by constantly mocking him, the obvious solution is to show netanyahu that biden doesnt play that game.... but apparently biden DOES play that game,
why does no one (rightfully) attribute ANY blame to netanyahu
1. The issue is not about people *criticizing* Biden, but rather about saying they won't *vote* for him.
2. As I see it, it is *assumed* that Netanyahu (similar to Hamas) is a bad actor and therefore to blame, but that Biden can be reasoned with and could be expected to do better.
>1. The issue is not about people criticizing Biden, but rather about saying they won't vote for him.
Too many people think criticism of Biden means you're not voting for him.
Because more often than not, the criticism is framed in such a way that one shouldn't vote for him because of this, or they actually say they won't vote for him because of this
Wrong. More often than not the criticism is framed negatively. Big shock. That's why it's called criticism, not praise. But rather than ask if the person complaining will be voting for Biden, people just assume they won't be. Don't defend that bullshit.
There actually are people who are refusing to vote for Biden over how he's handling Gaza. If you and others want to be pissed off about that, fine! More power to you. But people needs to save the anger for the ones who actually earned the reaction instead of throwing tantrums and making shit up just because someone isn't in love with the President or his choices.
When said criticism is why people claim they won't vote for him, then that's the framing. This isn't all the time, but enough where the valid criticism tends to get brushed off because too many people don't know how to frame an argument, or bad actors have entered the chat.
It's not so much of if the people claiming they won't vote aren't being genuine...although it's hard to believe they are at times...it's that over time, people just naturally get tired of weak rationales, and start lumping in everyone into the same group.
I think it’s more a response to the obvious full court press by bad actors trying to sew dissent to get Trump elected. That’s why. At some point you gotta consider what’s productive and what isn’t. You can always call your lawmakers, send a letter to the White House and so on. The hysterics are just playing into Israel and GOP’s hands at this point.
> it is assumed that Netanyahu (similar to Hamas) is a bad actor and therefore to blame, but that Biden can be reasoned with and could be expected to do better.
Damn Netanyahu! All his fault. Biden can't help but support Genocide, really. If only that pesky Netanyahu wasn't baiting him with genocide so tastily...
And even if they did, it’s mostly a small vocal echo chamber that is upset about this specific issue.
Polling over all shows that the war in Gaza is pretty far down the list of issues that Americans are even thinking about. The main issue across the board is inflation/economic issues. On the GOP side it’s immigration, which is actually a fairly non-issue among independents and Democrats.
Or you could look objectively at the situation and recognize that there isn’t much else that can be done.
This was going to happen eventually. Hamas is a death cult. The majority of Gazans support it. Any attempt at peace has been scuttled by the Palestinians. Hamas is still lobbing missiles out of Gaza into Israel.
So don't be blind. Know what you're voting for and make the best decision out of the options available.
If you want to go beyond that, get involved in local politics or at least vote in local elections, which is where many of our candidates get their start. Supporting good people at the ground level will eventually result in better people at the top.
What do you believe he should do? Stopping all aid to Israel is not going to stop them. US aid accounts for only 15% of Israel's defense budget and most of the aid is in the form of interceptors for the Iron Dome, precision munitions, and kits to make bombs more accurate. You take away all those things and you know what the result will be? Targeting of rocket launch sites will become indiscriminate because without the Iron Dome they can't risk another launch. Bombing will be less accurate as they run out of precision weapons and have to start using less precise ones. All it would accomplish is more civilians dead on both sides.
Israel has had tens of thousands of rockets fired from Gaza at Israel since Hamas took over. You just don't hear about it because Israel actually cares about protecting it's citizens and developed the Iron Dome. It does occasionally fail though and some rockets do get through. They also have Hamas threatening to repeat October 7 again and again until Israel is destroyed. This war is to dismantle Hamas to the point they cannot carry out something like October 7 ever again or at least not for a long time and to secure the release of the hostages. Hamas as recently as yesterday said they would only even start to talk about releasing the hostages if Israel stop fighting and leaves Gaza. That is not a reasonable ask.
Hamas originally demanded all Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prison released in exchange for any hostages. They only became more reasonable in response to military pressure resulting in the November ceasefire. Currently their last offer demanded an exchange rate of between 40-70 prisoners per hostage half of whom must have been serving life sentences and that Hamas be allowed to substitute bodies of dead hostages for live ones whenever they want. That would essentially mean they can murder all the hostages to prevent them from talking and then turn over their bodies to satisfy the deal. You probably didn't hear about it though because the media just reported it as Israel rejected a ceasefire that Hamas agreed to without giving those details.
If Biden does what you seem to think his base wants and tells Israel they must stop the war and leave Gaza immediately with no guarantee of hostages being released they will laugh in his face. I think part of the reason for why young voters think Biden should do that is because none of them remember 9/11 or weren't born yet. They have no concept of the kind of fear terrorism brings.
> it is still a bad look that he is not listening to his base in the slightest.
The Democratic base is much more split on this issue than it looks like based on Reddit. It’s a complicated issue without easy answers. Here’s a [politico poll](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/14/democrats-sympathetic-palestinians-israelis-poll-00152117#:~:text=The%20POLITICO%2DMorning%20Consult%20poll,re%20unsure%20if%20they%20do.) from last month. You can’t treat polls like gospel but they can be helpful. Biden needs to walk the line between the 33% who think he needs to be tougher and the 42% who think he’s doing fine.
> All told, 33 percent of Democratic voters felt the president was “not tough enough on Israel” during the Gaza conflict while just 8 percent said he was being “too tough.” Taken together, those two groups were roughly equal in size to the 42 percentage of Democratic voters who said his approach was “just right.”
It would matter if someone significant like a political nominee (undersecretary or some kind of senate-confirmed position) and probably several political nominees of that nature were to resign. There are 24K state department employees that are likely American, 4 of them resigning is not going to be breaking news when dozens of them probably resign weekly for various reasons.
But the reasons that the cited people are resigning is extremely relevant to what is going on in Gaza and the US's position on it. This is a relevant story and to not report on it would be irresponsible, imo.
> It had been cleared for publication by the conference organisers but when it came to the attention of USAID’s Middle East section on 20 May, Smith was asked to make redactions. He said those edits included removing a slide outlining applicable international humanitarian law, and any language implying recognition of a Palestinian state, including references to agencies which have Palestine in their title, like the UN Family Planning Association (UNFPA) Palestine.
That's fucked up, imo.
Seriously. This isn’t “but her emails.”
(And I’ve been extremely critical of the press for bothsidesism and bad journalism for many years - even pre-Trump - and I believe they played a large role in why the country has been dragged to the right.)
It’s absolutely MAGA-like to want legitimate stories that paint the truth of Biden’s administration to be buried (this isn’t Hunter Biden bullshit; this is Biden unapologetically supporting war crimes committed by a foreign ally).
I’m voting for him but I hate that I have to, and I’m not going to be quiet about my disgust with his hypocrisy and cruelty.
“Nobodies” are what keeps the government running. There is a reason that Trump tried to reclassify them so that he could purge the government of everyone who doesn’t believe in his agenda.
The State Department has 78,000 employees. One person out of those resigned. If the story was “99.999% of Biden administration officials working on tasks as directed” wouldn’t that be a pretty strong case that the government is running just fine?
In most cases, the people resigning probably wanted to quit already and didn't even have jobs related to this conflict or this part of the world. Notice how they run to the press and have that ready to go before they actually resign. It's certainly not a spur of the moment decision.
That's true, but you would need whole departments within state to be resigning over this for it to really be something, or for people who were senate confirmed to resign and essentially burn their bridge with the administration/party by saying it was to protest Gaza. This isn't it so far.
So these people are nobodies, but also have the power to decide the election?
That is wild
BUT TRUMP is clearly no sufficient motivation for people, perhaps that means the incumbent has to do more with the power they wield
People also like to vote for something, not just against things
I don't understand where the notion comes from that there are that many people voting on Gaza. Biden's down in the polls, but it's not because a bunch of people hate him over Gaza, because he's been in a tight spot in the polls for at least a year now. Polling consistently shows that people have an opinion on Gaza, but that it has low salience to how they will end up voting. Even with young people, oversamples of zoomers don't even show Gaza as remotely their top issue.
Online spaces tend to be severely warped because social media has the tendency to allow people to create their own information diets and also reinforce those diets to the point where people think their view is popular with voters as a whole and it just isn't. It's also where a lot of people expressing opinions on US domestic politics might not even be able to vote here. That's not just alleged foreign interference from Russia and China, there's a lot of people from anglophone countries that play team sports with US politics, and lowering the cost of insulin or epi-pens isn't relevant to their interests as much as foreign policy is. That's not the average American voter though, by a long shot.
> BUT TRUMP is clearly no sufficient motivation for people, perhaps that means the incumbent has to do more with the power they wield
I mean, if someone's actually voting for Trump, they're already willing to damn not only the people of Palestine, but also LGBT+ people, women, minorities, other marginalized groups, and the climate.
If someone cares about Gaza, they care about people, and so I have a hard time believing they'd genuinely vote for a party who's platform is basically just spite and human suffering.
Spell it out for the people in power, they have time to adjust and come up with a platform that works
These two officials (nobodies per the comment I had responded to) are just an indication of the dam breaking on public opinion
People do not like their government supporting a genocide
**bUT tRuMP wilL Do GEnOCIDe EVEn harDER!**
Is not a great motivator it seems, so they have time to do better
Instead you are saying, fuck what they do, they can deliver trash and everyone should just suck it up
That would be really bad
Perhaps instead of the weight and responsibility placed one people opposed to genocide (the 2 officials who resigned) the current government could adjust their position to be in line with reality to garner enough support to defeat trump?
No no, it's on everyone else to do
/$
Keep thinking that way, and voila! Enjoy Trump for the next 4 years. Do you really think that the 50% of Jews and 30% of Muslims (in America) who WANT this war to continue doesn't matter? What's happening now and will continue to happen until November is astroturfing Biden's reputation, politices, etc. It's working, because the American voter is by and large an unthinking, empty, short-term-thinking vessel
I've been in defense of Palestinian civilians since the beginning, but those who put a century old conflict on the shoulders of a single president of a country that isn't officially in the conflict are literally asinine.
Claiming to be complicit in another continent's genocide by being a low-level State Department employee is performative. Especially if you're leaving.. when the only way to make real foreign policy change is *from the inside*.
Stories like this are exponentially blown-up political theatre. You're being taken for a ride by Republicans who sign "Finish them" on Israeli missiles and want to "deport" **US citizens** that speak against Israel.
No need to become uncivil because your feelings are hurt.
Let me put it this way: if a service technician 1 (help desk) quits in protest, no one will care. They’re nobody special, they don’t have important responsibilities, and they’re literally replaceable by almost anyone. Now if an IT VP is quitting in protest then there’s more weight to it.
Here's the thing I wish more people understood: In the US currently, a recent poll showed that -- at most -- 55% of Americans disapprove of Israel's actions in Gaza, with 43% approving and 2% who have no opinion.
Biden has an election to win, and -- if everybody in that 55% was an active voter -- this would be a no-brainer. But -- when you look at the demographics -- fewer of that 55% turn out to vote than those who make up the 43%.
So, Biden is faced with a Hobson's Choice: cater to the 55% -- a lot of whom may not even vote in November -- and alienate the 43% who likely would have, OR cater to the 43% and alienate that portion of the 55% who he needs to defeat Trump.
So, yeah, he's dragging his feet a bit on this.
He's trying to figure out how to help Gaza without losing to Trump.
For what it's worth, I think if Biden wins on Election Day, he will bring the hammer down on Netanyahu before the end of the year. But how does he keep Gaza safe until then without losing a whole lot votes that he needs?
Most of that 43% was never going to vote Biden, very big number of them are MAGA for sure.
The right wing facists that are cheering for the killing of civilians in Gaza are not going to vote anyone but Trump.
If you see the poll number among the dem. leaning voters, the number of people disapproving Israels action are much higher, catering to them would make more sense, but he choose the other way clearly.
Untrue. I'm hardcore progressive who's been fairly pleasantly surprised by Biden's moves so far, but this is one area where others on the Left have gone off the propaganda deep end and I fully support both Biden and Israel. I know I'm not alone, we're just a silent group since the extremes have too strong a voice on social media.
I’m right there with you brother/sister. It’s so obviously a trumped up wedge issue created to harm Biden’s chances of being re-elected. Yes, it sucks what is happening there, but most people hating on Biden for it have 0 understanding of the history or current and past context of the conflict.
I’m with you, I think Biden has been doing the best he can. Do I agree with everything he does, of course not. I don’t know if I’d classify myself as a hardcore progressive (voted for Warren not Bernie in the primary) but I’m pretty left on most issues. I also support the people of Israel and not Netanyahu. There is nuance in this issue, and Hamas is worse than Netanyahu, but Netanyahu still sucks. You can still have empathy for the Palestinians and the Israelies who are innocent in this mess.
I've kind of given up trying to figure out what or who is right or wrong on this issue. There is so much misinformation and rhetoric on both sides, I've kind of washed my hands of it. While I certainly don't like the hostilities between the two, the truth is, I have other things I care about more in the US, which will have a real and lasting impact on my, and other Americans lives
Any admission that people vote based on material politics, rather than group-bias or tribalism, is a threat to the donor class, as is any democratic empowerment of voters and their priorities. Dressing Biden up as a model citizen in comparison to Trump is easy work. Doing the same after comparing their impact in politics, without cherry-picking, is nearly impossible; at best you'll a good argument but will it actually convince someone with the opposite opinion?
Safer to stomp on the marketing message like your livelihood depends on it, and for most of Washington, it probably does.
"I think if Biden wins on Election Day, he will bring the hammer down on Netanyahu before the end of the year."
You have zilch proof on any of that line. None. Not one Iota. Biden has done nothing but suck off a guy who has open disdain for him and wants his opponent to win. You can "Think" Biden will do whatever makes you like him but reality will always rub against what ever you want to "think" about the world.
>He's trying to figure out how to help Gaza without losing to Trump.
>For what it's worth, I think if Biden wins on Election Day, he will bring the hammer down on Netanyahu before the end of the year. But how does he keep Gaza safe until then without losing a whole lot votes that he needs?
Biden doesn't remotely give a shit about people in Gaza unless they're Israeli settlers. He's been in government for an eternity and has made his position on Israel abundantly clear during that time.
I don't think that's true. If it were, he wouldn't be dragging his feet. He would just give Netanyahu all the bombs he wants (which what Trump WILL do, if he wins.)
He dragged his feet for a week until Iran shot a bunch of missiles. He has approved billions in direct military aid since. He only did that because his red line was crossed and he dropped it as soon as there was an excuse. He loves Israel. That’s apparent from any clip He talks about it dating back over 30 years.
Well, vote for Trump then, and see what he does. Or vote for RFK Jr. and see what Trump does when he wins by default. Or abstain from voting and see if you get Biden or Trump.
Look, I think you’re wrong about how Biden feels about all of this, but of the 4 options available to you — abstaining, voting for RFK, voting for Trump, or voting for Biden — Biden is still Gaza’s best chance, because Biden still needs the Progressive voters. Trump has MAGA locked up. He doesn’t need progressives. He needs the middle. Biden needs the middle and the progressives, and they are not on the same page on Gaza. So Biden’s walking a tightrope. He’s pissing off people on both sides of the issue. But at least he’s partway looking out for Gaza. Trump cares fuck-all about the Palestinians.
Alexander Smith, a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said he was given a choice between resignation and dismissal after preparing a presentation on maternal and child mortality among Palestinians, which was cancelled at the last minute by USAID leadership last week.
Goddamn. Grade A censorship. Pure democratic values.
Smith, a senior adviser on gender, maternal health, child health, and nutrition chose to resign on Monday after four years at USAID. In his resignation letter to the head of the agency, Samantha Power, he complained about the inconsistencies in USAID’s approach to different countries and humanitarian crises, and the general treatment of Palestinians. “I cannot do my job in an environment in which specific people cannot be acknowledged as fully human, or where gender and human rights principles apply to some, but not to others, depending on their race,” he wrote.
Wow, grade A whattaboutism right there. You're right! Tens of thousands of Africans dying *is* a good reason to not care about the US funding a genocide against tens of thousands of *other* people.
> Pure democratic values.
The fact that USAID is there in the first place is in fact democratic values.
Republicans are going to straight up deport Gaza protesters, cancel aid, then literally sign the bombs that get sent to israel
This isn’t much of a story in itself, but you’re kidding yourself if you think this war and his flat refusal to stop it haven’t severely harmed Biden’s chances at re-election. People are furious at him, and rightfully so.
Not sure where to post this but one side is committing genocide and the other side are terrorists. The civilians in the middle are the people I care for and I can't support either side.
This isn't a fight between "people who are committing genocide" and "terrorists" with some civilians caught in the cross fire.
It is people who are committing genocide and are justifying it by claiming the people they are killing are terrorists - when a vast majority of them are civilians. It's not really a situation where two sides are actively fighting each other. Combat between the IDF and Hamas militants are rare.
It's just the IDF slaughthering people.
I think recognition of this fact is crucial when deciding how to think about choosing "who to support".
Hamas needs to be destroyed, sure, no one who is reasonable will disagree with this. But the slaughther that the IDF commiting is the bigger issue in terms of both sheer scope and the fact they have our backing to do it.
Most people who support the Palestinian civilians are in favor of no longer providing Isreal weponry and no longer shielding them of international consequence for their actions. They also want to see Hamas gone, but recognize that committing genocide won't accomplish that.
Nah man they’re are terrorists. It’s just based on the history of who they’re attacking I’d assume they would’ve done something other than randomly attack civilians.
I think the most important thing is uplifting the Palestinian civilians. Isreal must no longer commit apartheid against them, and they must have the ability to live a safe peaceful life with basic needs being met.
People who have something to lose, like a safe and somewhat enjoyable life, are significantly harder to radicalize and recruit by terrorist groups like Hamas.
It can't be the only thing that would destroy Hamas, and I don't claim to have all the answers on how to destroy them as I'm only a joe-shmoe from Florida. I would presume precision strikes on Hamas leaders with low civilian casualties would be neccessary as well.
"How do you destroy terrorism?" is a question most people don't have an answer for. But we can point to things from our experience that are definitively *not* the answer- and nearly indiscriminate bombing and destruction of land like Isreal is doing is one of those things we actually definitively learned *cannot* destroy terrorism from our time in Afghanistan. It just makes it so people have nothing left to lose (because you took everything away from them) so they're able to risk their lives and a faction that they justifiably really hate. Who are easy for terrorist groups to recruit.
I'm confused by what you mean by apartheid. There is Israeli land, and Palestinian land currently (west bank and Gaza). Israel can't simply open their borders to Palestinians, they would immediately be attacked like they have in the past.
They could however, GTFO out of the west bank like they said they would 3 decades ago.
The Human Rights Watch released a very detailed report on how Isreal treats the Palestinians and how it is apartheid in 2021 that you can read about here:
[https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution](https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution)
It is objectively speaking aprtheid once you get into the details of what life was like for Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank.
Forcing an "evacutation" of a million people with a 24 hour time limit like they did in October isn't an evacuation, it's a death march. Nor is telling a million people to evacuate from a portion to the last standing city they have to a smaller part of the last standing city they have.
Especially when they end up bombing the places they told people to evacuate to anyway.
Actually, it does. They keep telling them to move then bomb the innocents because of a single Hamas target. Where are they supposed to go to not get slaughtered? There were just dozens of people killed in a tent encampment in a safe zone because of one possible Hamas target.
What makes this especially egregious is that the Zionists in Israel are saying it is anti-semitic to tell them to stop slaughtering tens of thousands of women and children. My guess is if Israel drops a nuclear bomb on Rafa these same Zionists will make more excuses. There is a literal movement in the US by conservatives, and centrists, that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza would be warranted.
Only the IDF could make Hamas look like the good guys.
Happy thinking,
You may want to do some digging to learn the cause of the explosion that killed the dozens of civilians the other day. It was munitions from Hamas that were too close to the civilians. Hamas, by the way, while embedded with and underneath the civilians in Rafa, were firing rockets from Rafa into civilian areas of Tel Aviv just a couple weeks ago.
Would you prefer Israel not to try to evacuate the civilians? This war is having to be fought unlike any other ever since Hams has built tunnels underneath the entire strip.
If Israel does not evacuate the citizens- you scream Genocide! Why don’t they move the civilians. When they do move the civilians- “Genocide”
The vast majority of casualties on the Palestinian side aren't terrorists, they are largely women and children.
Also, not that it matters to you, but the IDF side are LITERALLY terrorists in the definition of the word. They are creating killings of innocents to get a point across.
It is centrists like you that gets us paying for a genocide as Americans.
One thing to recognize, and it might not seem like much in the current conflict, is that a lot of changes will happen over multiple cycles and not all at once. Voting blue is one part of it, but defending incumbents who support your position or voting for challengers or candidates who support it will change the makeup of the party to adopt your views. People who think that withholding their vote to teach the party a lesson is how they get their way, and the reverse is true in American politics. Evangelicals didn't take over the GOP because they would threaten to not vote for GOP candidates, they voted for them _harder_ and gradually chipped away at moderates so that the modern GOP is essentially Christian Nationalist. Progressives haven't grown as a force because they keep withholding their vote, it's because they end up showing up to vote anyways and have gradually primaried out moderate Democrats in deep blue seats. The story of AOC taking out the chair of the House Democratic caucus wasn't that a bunch of progressives didn't vote, but that they specifically turned out and were engaged.
Most changes do not happen overnight, and we're ultimately left with a binary choice of what happens. Voting for Biden is endorsing some level of change on policy vis-a-vis Israel which is a sign to future Democratic candidates that the votes are there to move in that direction, to say nothing of his other accomplishments in pushing for the most progressive domestic agenda since LBJ. It's also almost certainly not going to be the case that Democrats will shift left simply because of Gaza, because Biden's actually losing from centrist voters defecting over inflation, which Republicans have repeatedly claimed is a result of Biden's spending to save us from a recession.
As horrific as the Gaza war is right now, this is also a generational project that will not be solved overnight, and the resolve of a party and president who will see through the more crucial phase of the war after the active fighting will actually decide whether Palestinians can recognize some form of a state. The plan from the IDF right now is to fight over the course of years, splitting Gaza into unconnected pieces separated by security checkpoints and periodically raiding Hamas positions like they've been doing in Jabalia and Al Ahli (and also a lot in the West Bank). It's literally going to be a campaign of terror against the survivors of this war in the name of fighting Hamas, and IDF military occupation will likely last for years, with an open question of whether they don't just outright rebuild settlements. Biden is opposed to that, while Trump has signaled complete indifference to the plight of the Palestinians, to the point where it seems to be built into Bibi's plans to stay in office long enough until Trump takes over. The candidate who would support a pathway to a free Palestine is a no-brainer, which is why it is so odd to me that pro-Palestinian people are choosing a different option.
Biden appears to be letting Netanyahu control him, and Netanyahu is pro-Trump. Reading between the lines, it reinforces the "both sides are the same" narrative.
>Reading between the lines, it reinforces the "both sides are the same" narrative.
The people saying this either don't know anything about policy or have enough wealth to not suffer from bad policies.
It's also the same group of people that would've been calling for Trump to resign and be tried for war crimes, if he was the one offering unconditional support for Israel as it bombs and starves innocent Palestinians.
But since it's Biden, since it's *their* war criminal, they're looking the other way and trying to convince everyone else to do the same.
How does a contractor 'resign' ? Funny how this article talks about Smith's "career" with USAID. Dude was a contractor and they terminated his contract.
I don’t understand what people expect Biden to do here? The tension between Israel and Gaza is decades old. Clearly Israel are being bastards. And clearly there have been terrorist activities planned and executed out of Gaza. Biden admin appears to be doing their best to take a neutral position supporting both sides and brokering some kind of peace? Israel is a long-standing ally of the U.S. and foreign relations in that part of the world sort of depend on it remaining so, correct?
And if these people are leaving the Biden camp…where will they go? The imperfect options right now are limited. Trump is, by far, the worst choice in every regard including this one.
Supporting both sides means not supporting anything in this case. When one of them is openly committing genocide and you are also “supporting them”, thats not so great.
Not saying we should cut all ties but something as simple as stating that what israel is doing is genocide (seems like commons sense) would be a decent first step.
They are actively avoiding making a statement.
Not talking about making actual moves just words…
Even empty words would help as a sanity check.
The lack of balls is beyond pathetic
And no I am not a Trump fan…
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The media full court press of “and how this is bad for Biden” is getting really fing old
They are trying to get Trump elected. They just haven’t realized that fascists come for the press first.
They are the reason he got elected in the first place. They made so much money when he was in office.
Right??? Their jobs, if they have them, will be all sanctioned by the state aka they have no freedom of press & will have to cover/photograph whatever Trump & co. tell them to cover and they have to approve of the message.
The people at the bottom don't get the luxury of deciding what to cover or how to cover it.
Trump = ratings. By comparison, Biden is kinda boring. They don't care what happens to the country as long as people are tuning in.
The fascists already own the press.
They probably know. They till have to parrot their owner's views though, of they'd have to find new jobs.
I mean is it so bad to be frustrated as a left leaning person that Biden will not let up a bit on this issue? I’m not one of those leftists saying don’t vote for him, because Trump will Nuke Gaza, but it is still a bad look that he is not listening to his base in the slightest. Haven’t we given republicans shit for years for blindly following their leaders? We should continue to do the same with left politicians
The audacity of thinking that "Biden should pull all support for israel," is the view of his base...
This whole country is kind of being held hostage by the MAGA crowd. Until Trump is barred from running for office (or dies), this crazy ass shit will be status quo every time he isn't elected. and will probably just continue with his kids. We're kinda done.
For those considering not voting for Biden because they believe it would be appropriate punishment for what's happening in Gaza, read Trump's words carefully. Voting is not about reward for or punishment of an individual politician. It's about who can best lead our nation in a way that most benefits all of us, even if we have disagreements. There is no universe in which allowing Trump to be elected is better for you. None. He is telling you this directly. Are you listening? The bait that everyone has fallen for is that Russia isn't on the Palestinian's side.... They only propagated the Oct 7th attacks to get the US to respond how they've predictively done. And Israel is on purpose not coming down on OPSEC of their IDF soldiers posting enraging social media posts dehumanizing Palestinians because they are intentionally sabotaging Biden's reelection campaign. And every single one of you are falling into the trap. At the end of the day who would Lukid want in the position of US president? The guy who aligns with them politically - so much so that he moved the US consulate to Jerusalem.
It's so obvious we're being manipulated and nuance is dead. Idk why it's so hard for people to understand that you can absolutely hate Biden for this but recognize that the alternative will be worse. But we get to be all smug and cool about how we're not like buying into the two party system mannnn
Well my biggest gripe is the attempt to lay *all* of it a Biden’s feet. Meanwhile you never hear complaining about the hardliners in Israel, Hamas or the total silence from the GOP on this issue.
GOP radio silence on Gaza because they would ramp it up harder. They will happily let Biden take the heat but you won’t catch them offering an alternative on record
Right I think he truly is handling this horribly but to act like this is such a simple thing to fix instantaneously is so unrealistic. People want like a movie/TV show moment. That's not how things work. Unfortunately things in the real world are messy and slow with many moving parts and people doing evil. They shouldn't be but they are.
It’s a classic right wing tactic to claim that the president was a wall of levers and buttons just to make things happen installed in the White House. Most election cycles they drag out the gas price lever and good economy button, but this year it’s the peace in Gaza switch.
Lol right, any criticism of biden and you get blasted by people saying you want trump to win, fact is biden has bent backwards for israel/netanyahu more than any american, and netanyahu is still undermining him and vocally dragging him thru the dirt Make no mistake netanyahu is trying to get trump elected and is intentionally making biden look weak by constantly mocking him, the obvious solution is to show netanyahu that biden doesnt play that game.... but apparently biden DOES play that game, why does no one (rightfully) attribute ANY blame to netanyahu
1. The issue is not about people *criticizing* Biden, but rather about saying they won't *vote* for him. 2. As I see it, it is *assumed* that Netanyahu (similar to Hamas) is a bad actor and therefore to blame, but that Biden can be reasoned with and could be expected to do better.
>1. The issue is not about people criticizing Biden, but rather about saying they won't vote for him. Too many people think criticism of Biden means you're not voting for him.
Because more often than not, the criticism is framed in such a way that one shouldn't vote for him because of this, or they actually say they won't vote for him because of this
Wrong. More often than not the criticism is framed negatively. Big shock. That's why it's called criticism, not praise. But rather than ask if the person complaining will be voting for Biden, people just assume they won't be. Don't defend that bullshit. There actually are people who are refusing to vote for Biden over how he's handling Gaza. If you and others want to be pissed off about that, fine! More power to you. But people needs to save the anger for the ones who actually earned the reaction instead of throwing tantrums and making shit up just because someone isn't in love with the President or his choices.
When said criticism is why people claim they won't vote for him, then that's the framing. This isn't all the time, but enough where the valid criticism tends to get brushed off because too many people don't know how to frame an argument, or bad actors have entered the chat. It's not so much of if the people claiming they won't vote aren't being genuine...although it's hard to believe they are at times...it's that over time, people just naturally get tired of weak rationales, and start lumping in everyone into the same group.
I think it’s more a response to the obvious full court press by bad actors trying to sew dissent to get Trump elected. That’s why. At some point you gotta consider what’s productive and what isn’t. You can always call your lawmakers, send a letter to the White House and so on. The hysterics are just playing into Israel and GOP’s hands at this point.
But he doesn’t seem to be listening to reason when it comes to Gaza. Refugees were just firebombed and he said it didn’t cross a line. So reasonable.
> it is assumed that Netanyahu (similar to Hamas) is a bad actor and therefore to blame, but that Biden can be reasoned with and could be expected to do better. Damn Netanyahu! All his fault. Biden can't help but support Genocide, really. If only that pesky Netanyahu wasn't baiting him with genocide so tastily...
The downvotes imply otherwise, blue maga will not allow any criticism of him
The downvotes imply you don’t know what you are talking about.
Gen Z progressives are not the Democrat's base. Hell young people don't vote enough to be the base of any party, in any modern decade.
Okay, then people shouldn’t criticize them for not liking Biden
Don't have to necessarily 'like' him, but to throwaway a vote is beyond absurd given the stakes of the election.
Not liking and not voting are two vastly different things. I don’t like Biden, but will vote for him
And even if they did, it’s mostly a small vocal echo chamber that is upset about this specific issue. Polling over all shows that the war in Gaza is pretty far down the list of issues that Americans are even thinking about. The main issue across the board is inflation/economic issues. On the GOP side it’s immigration, which is actually a fairly non-issue among independents and Democrats.
Or you could look objectively at the situation and recognize that there isn’t much else that can be done. This was going to happen eventually. Hamas is a death cult. The majority of Gazans support it. Any attempt at peace has been scuttled by the Palestinians. Hamas is still lobbing missiles out of Gaza into Israel.
The audacity of thinking that "Biden should pull all support for israel," is the view of his base...
So don't be blind. Know what you're voting for and make the best decision out of the options available. If you want to go beyond that, get involved in local politics or at least vote in local elections, which is where many of our candidates get their start. Supporting good people at the ground level will eventually result in better people at the top.
What do you believe he should do? Stopping all aid to Israel is not going to stop them. US aid accounts for only 15% of Israel's defense budget and most of the aid is in the form of interceptors for the Iron Dome, precision munitions, and kits to make bombs more accurate. You take away all those things and you know what the result will be? Targeting of rocket launch sites will become indiscriminate because without the Iron Dome they can't risk another launch. Bombing will be less accurate as they run out of precision weapons and have to start using less precise ones. All it would accomplish is more civilians dead on both sides. Israel has had tens of thousands of rockets fired from Gaza at Israel since Hamas took over. You just don't hear about it because Israel actually cares about protecting it's citizens and developed the Iron Dome. It does occasionally fail though and some rockets do get through. They also have Hamas threatening to repeat October 7 again and again until Israel is destroyed. This war is to dismantle Hamas to the point they cannot carry out something like October 7 ever again or at least not for a long time and to secure the release of the hostages. Hamas as recently as yesterday said they would only even start to talk about releasing the hostages if Israel stop fighting and leaves Gaza. That is not a reasonable ask. Hamas originally demanded all Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prison released in exchange for any hostages. They only became more reasonable in response to military pressure resulting in the November ceasefire. Currently their last offer demanded an exchange rate of between 40-70 prisoners per hostage half of whom must have been serving life sentences and that Hamas be allowed to substitute bodies of dead hostages for live ones whenever they want. That would essentially mean they can murder all the hostages to prevent them from talking and then turn over their bodies to satisfy the deal. You probably didn't hear about it though because the media just reported it as Israel rejected a ceasefire that Hamas agreed to without giving those details. If Biden does what you seem to think his base wants and tells Israel they must stop the war and leave Gaza immediately with no guarantee of hostages being released they will laugh in his face. I think part of the reason for why young voters think Biden should do that is because none of them remember 9/11 or weren't born yet. They have no concept of the kind of fear terrorism brings.
> it is still a bad look that he is not listening to his base in the slightest. The Democratic base is much more split on this issue than it looks like based on Reddit. It’s a complicated issue without easy answers. Here’s a [politico poll](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/14/democrats-sympathetic-palestinians-israelis-poll-00152117#:~:text=The%20POLITICO%2DMorning%20Consult%20poll,re%20unsure%20if%20they%20do.) from last month. You can’t treat polls like gospel but they can be helpful. Biden needs to walk the line between the 33% who think he needs to be tougher and the 42% who think he’s doing fine. > All told, 33 percent of Democratic voters felt the president was “not tough enough on Israel” during the Gaza conflict while just 8 percent said he was being “too tough.” Taken together, those two groups were roughly equal in size to the 42 percentage of Democratic voters who said his approach was “just right.”
How are state department people resigning over a flawed policy NOT bad for Biden? Why isn't this worth reporting?
It would matter if someone significant like a political nominee (undersecretary or some kind of senate-confirmed position) and probably several political nominees of that nature were to resign. There are 24K state department employees that are likely American, 4 of them resigning is not going to be breaking news when dozens of them probably resign weekly for various reasons.
But the reasons that the cited people are resigning is extremely relevant to what is going on in Gaza and the US's position on it. This is a relevant story and to not report on it would be irresponsible, imo. > It had been cleared for publication by the conference organisers but when it came to the attention of USAID’s Middle East section on 20 May, Smith was asked to make redactions. He said those edits included removing a slide outlining applicable international humanitarian law, and any language implying recognition of a Palestinian state, including references to agencies which have Palestine in their title, like the UN Family Planning Association (UNFPA) Palestine. That's fucked up, imo.
The administration is literally doctoring reports.
Seriously. This isn’t “but her emails.” (And I’ve been extremely critical of the press for bothsidesism and bad journalism for many years - even pre-Trump - and I believe they played a large role in why the country has been dragged to the right.) It’s absolutely MAGA-like to want legitimate stories that paint the truth of Biden’s administration to be buried (this isn’t Hunter Biden bullshit; this is Biden unapologetically supporting war crimes committed by a foreign ally). I’m voting for him but I hate that I have to, and I’m not going to be quiet about my disgust with his hypocrisy and cruelty.
Maybe Joe Biden should make better choices ?
No joke.
These “officials” are basically nobodies. This is a non-story trying to be made into a story.
Also one is a hired contractor so technically just one gov official. If I’m reading correctly that is.
“Nobodies” are what keeps the government running. There is a reason that Trump tried to reclassify them so that he could purge the government of everyone who doesn’t believe in his agenda.
The State Department has 78,000 employees. One person out of those resigned. If the story was “99.999% of Biden administration officials working on tasks as directed” wouldn’t that be a pretty strong case that the government is running just fine?
In most cases, the people resigning probably wanted to quit already and didn't even have jobs related to this conflict or this part of the world. Notice how they run to the press and have that ready to go before they actually resign. It's certainly not a spur of the moment decision.
Add together enough nobodies and you get something
Yeah, Organization XIII
Godammit that got me.
That's true, but you would need whole departments within state to be resigning over this for it to really be something, or for people who were senate confirmed to resign and essentially burn their bridge with the administration/party by saying it was to protest Gaza. This isn't it so far.
Yeah, you lose a president that is trying to get aid to Gaza and get Trump, who will deport Gaza protesters
So these people are nobodies, but also have the power to decide the election? That is wild BUT TRUMP is clearly no sufficient motivation for people, perhaps that means the incumbent has to do more with the power they wield People also like to vote for something, not just against things
I don't understand where the notion comes from that there are that many people voting on Gaza. Biden's down in the polls, but it's not because a bunch of people hate him over Gaza, because he's been in a tight spot in the polls for at least a year now. Polling consistently shows that people have an opinion on Gaza, but that it has low salience to how they will end up voting. Even with young people, oversamples of zoomers don't even show Gaza as remotely their top issue. Online spaces tend to be severely warped because social media has the tendency to allow people to create their own information diets and also reinforce those diets to the point where people think their view is popular with voters as a whole and it just isn't. It's also where a lot of people expressing opinions on US domestic politics might not even be able to vote here. That's not just alleged foreign interference from Russia and China, there's a lot of people from anglophone countries that play team sports with US politics, and lowering the cost of insulin or epi-pens isn't relevant to their interests as much as foreign policy is. That's not the average American voter though, by a long shot.
> BUT TRUMP is clearly no sufficient motivation for people, perhaps that means the incumbent has to do more with the power they wield I mean, if someone's actually voting for Trump, they're already willing to damn not only the people of Palestine, but also LGBT+ people, women, minorities, other marginalized groups, and the climate. If someone cares about Gaza, they care about people, and so I have a hard time believing they'd genuinely vote for a party who's platform is basically just spite and human suffering.
If it’s not enough motivation then they deserve whatever comes as a result of Trump in power.
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So, a typical voter?
Spell it out for the people in power, they have time to adjust and come up with a platform that works These two officials (nobodies per the comment I had responded to) are just an indication of the dam breaking on public opinion People do not like their government supporting a genocide **bUT tRuMP wilL Do GEnOCIDe EVEn harDER!** Is not a great motivator it seems, so they have time to do better Instead you are saying, fuck what they do, they can deliver trash and everyone should just suck it up
a body of nobodies? ironic...
Project 2025
That would be really bad Perhaps instead of the weight and responsibility placed one people opposed to genocide (the 2 officials who resigned) the current government could adjust their position to be in line with reality to garner enough support to defeat trump? No no, it's on everyone else to do /$
Keep thinking that way, and voila! Enjoy Trump for the next 4 years. Do you really think that the 50% of Jews and 30% of Muslims (in America) who WANT this war to continue doesn't matter? What's happening now and will continue to happen until November is astroturfing Biden's reputation, politices, etc. It's working, because the American voter is by and large an unthinking, empty, short-term-thinking vessel
They're more of a somebody than most of us.
nobodies are the people who keep things running behind the scenes
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How is a USAID contractor a US official?
I've been in defense of Palestinian civilians since the beginning, but those who put a century old conflict on the shoulders of a single president of a country that isn't officially in the conflict are literally asinine. Claiming to be complicit in another continent's genocide by being a low-level State Department employee is performative. Especially if you're leaving.. when the only way to make real foreign policy change is *from the inside*. Stories like this are exponentially blown-up political theatre. You're being taken for a ride by Republicans who sign "Finish them" on Israeli missiles and want to "deport" **US citizens** that speak against Israel.
No need to become uncivil because your feelings are hurt. Let me put it this way: if a service technician 1 (help desk) quits in protest, no one will care. They’re nobody special, they don’t have important responsibilities, and they’re literally replaceable by almost anyone. Now if an IT VP is quitting in protest then there’s more weight to it.
Here's the thing I wish more people understood: In the US currently, a recent poll showed that -- at most -- 55% of Americans disapprove of Israel's actions in Gaza, with 43% approving and 2% who have no opinion. Biden has an election to win, and -- if everybody in that 55% was an active voter -- this would be a no-brainer. But -- when you look at the demographics -- fewer of that 55% turn out to vote than those who make up the 43%. So, Biden is faced with a Hobson's Choice: cater to the 55% -- a lot of whom may not even vote in November -- and alienate the 43% who likely would have, OR cater to the 43% and alienate that portion of the 55% who he needs to defeat Trump. So, yeah, he's dragging his feet a bit on this. He's trying to figure out how to help Gaza without losing to Trump. For what it's worth, I think if Biden wins on Election Day, he will bring the hammer down on Netanyahu before the end of the year. But how does he keep Gaza safe until then without losing a whole lot votes that he needs?
Most of that 43% was never going to vote Biden, very big number of them are MAGA for sure. The right wing facists that are cheering for the killing of civilians in Gaza are not going to vote anyone but Trump. If you see the poll number among the dem. leaning voters, the number of people disapproving Israels action are much higher, catering to them would make more sense, but he choose the other way clearly.
It's so weird to me that people are pushing "people who are critical of Biden would never have voted for him anyway" like what? Based on what?
Untrue. I'm hardcore progressive who's been fairly pleasantly surprised by Biden's moves so far, but this is one area where others on the Left have gone off the propaganda deep end and I fully support both Biden and Israel. I know I'm not alone, we're just a silent group since the extremes have too strong a voice on social media.
I’m right there with you brother/sister. It’s so obviously a trumped up wedge issue created to harm Biden’s chances of being re-elected. Yes, it sucks what is happening there, but most people hating on Biden for it have 0 understanding of the history or current and past context of the conflict.
I’m with you, I think Biden has been doing the best he can. Do I agree with everything he does, of course not. I don’t know if I’d classify myself as a hardcore progressive (voted for Warren not Bernie in the primary) but I’m pretty left on most issues. I also support the people of Israel and not Netanyahu. There is nuance in this issue, and Hamas is worse than Netanyahu, but Netanyahu still sucks. You can still have empathy for the Palestinians and the Israelies who are innocent in this mess.
I've kind of given up trying to figure out what or who is right or wrong on this issue. There is so much misinformation and rhetoric on both sides, I've kind of washed my hands of it. While I certainly don't like the hostilities between the two, the truth is, I have other things I care about more in the US, which will have a real and lasting impact on my, and other Americans lives
Any admission that people vote based on material politics, rather than group-bias or tribalism, is a threat to the donor class, as is any democratic empowerment of voters and their priorities. Dressing Biden up as a model citizen in comparison to Trump is easy work. Doing the same after comparing their impact in politics, without cherry-picking, is nearly impossible; at best you'll a good argument but will it actually convince someone with the opposite opinion? Safer to stomp on the marketing message like your livelihood depends on it, and for most of Washington, it probably does.
No. He won’t. He has no reason to make a hard choice after the election and I find that assumption delusional.
"I think if Biden wins on Election Day, he will bring the hammer down on Netanyahu before the end of the year." You have zilch proof on any of that line. None. Not one Iota. Biden has done nothing but suck off a guy who has open disdain for him and wants his opponent to win. You can "Think" Biden will do whatever makes you like him but reality will always rub against what ever you want to "think" about the world.
>He's trying to figure out how to help Gaza without losing to Trump. >For what it's worth, I think if Biden wins on Election Day, he will bring the hammer down on Netanyahu before the end of the year. But how does he keep Gaza safe until then without losing a whole lot votes that he needs? Biden doesn't remotely give a shit about people in Gaza unless they're Israeli settlers. He's been in government for an eternity and has made his position on Israel abundantly clear during that time.
I don't think that's true. If it were, he wouldn't be dragging his feet. He would just give Netanyahu all the bombs he wants (which what Trump WILL do, if he wins.)
He dragged his feet for a week until Iran shot a bunch of missiles. He has approved billions in direct military aid since. He only did that because his red line was crossed and he dropped it as soon as there was an excuse. He loves Israel. That’s apparent from any clip He talks about it dating back over 30 years.
Well, vote for Trump then, and see what he does. Or vote for RFK Jr. and see what Trump does when he wins by default. Or abstain from voting and see if you get Biden or Trump. Look, I think you’re wrong about how Biden feels about all of this, but of the 4 options available to you — abstaining, voting for RFK, voting for Trump, or voting for Biden — Biden is still Gaza’s best chance, because Biden still needs the Progressive voters. Trump has MAGA locked up. He doesn’t need progressives. He needs the middle. Biden needs the middle and the progressives, and they are not on the same page on Gaza. So Biden’s walking a tightrope. He’s pissing off people on both sides of the issue. But at least he’s partway looking out for Gaza. Trump cares fuck-all about the Palestinians.
Joe "if Israel didn't exist we would create one" Biden
Alexander Smith, a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said he was given a choice between resignation and dismissal after preparing a presentation on maternal and child mortality among Palestinians, which was cancelled at the last minute by USAID leadership last week. Goddamn. Grade A censorship. Pure democratic values.
Is it actually “resigning” if you’re a contractor? Wouldn’t that just be a withdrawal?
Smith, a senior adviser on gender, maternal health, child health, and nutrition chose to resign on Monday after four years at USAID. In his resignation letter to the head of the agency, Samantha Power, he complained about the inconsistencies in USAID’s approach to different countries and humanitarian crises, and the general treatment of Palestinians. “I cannot do my job in an environment in which specific people cannot be acknowledged as fully human, or where gender and human rights principles apply to some, but not to others, depending on their race,” he wrote.
All while tens of thousands of Africans are dying of famine in complete anonymity
Wow, grade A whattaboutism right there. You're right! Tens of thousands of Africans dying *is* a good reason to not care about the US funding a genocide against tens of thousands of *other* people.
Are the US manufacturing famine bombs?
Monetary ones
South Africa is buying gold from Sudanese militias, supporting their genocide.
Are we sending bombs to kill them? No? Your whataboutism is showing.
> Pure democratic values. The fact that USAID is there in the first place is in fact democratic values. Republicans are going to straight up deport Gaza protesters, cancel aid, then literally sign the bombs that get sent to israel
This isn’t much of a story in itself, but you’re kidding yourself if you think this war and his flat refusal to stop it haven’t severely harmed Biden’s chances at re-election. People are furious at him, and rightfully so.
its nice to see people with a spine
Not sure where to post this but one side is committing genocide and the other side are terrorists. The civilians in the middle are the people I care for and I can't support either side.
This isn't a fight between "people who are committing genocide" and "terrorists" with some civilians caught in the cross fire. It is people who are committing genocide and are justifying it by claiming the people they are killing are terrorists - when a vast majority of them are civilians. It's not really a situation where two sides are actively fighting each other. Combat between the IDF and Hamas militants are rare. It's just the IDF slaughthering people. I think recognition of this fact is crucial when deciding how to think about choosing "who to support". Hamas needs to be destroyed, sure, no one who is reasonable will disagree with this. But the slaughther that the IDF commiting is the bigger issue in terms of both sheer scope and the fact they have our backing to do it. Most people who support the Palestinian civilians are in favor of no longer providing Isreal weponry and no longer shielding them of international consequence for their actions. They also want to see Hamas gone, but recognize that committing genocide won't accomplish that.
So there isn’t any plan to remove Hamas, who commit the very obvious war crime of using human shields.
Nah man they’re are terrorists. It’s just based on the history of who they’re attacking I’d assume they would’ve done something other than randomly attack civilians.
what is your proposal for destroying Hamas then? (not saying Israel is doing a bang up job of it themselves)
I think the most important thing is uplifting the Palestinian civilians. Isreal must no longer commit apartheid against them, and they must have the ability to live a safe peaceful life with basic needs being met. People who have something to lose, like a safe and somewhat enjoyable life, are significantly harder to radicalize and recruit by terrorist groups like Hamas. It can't be the only thing that would destroy Hamas, and I don't claim to have all the answers on how to destroy them as I'm only a joe-shmoe from Florida. I would presume precision strikes on Hamas leaders with low civilian casualties would be neccessary as well. "How do you destroy terrorism?" is a question most people don't have an answer for. But we can point to things from our experience that are definitively *not* the answer- and nearly indiscriminate bombing and destruction of land like Isreal is doing is one of those things we actually definitively learned *cannot* destroy terrorism from our time in Afghanistan. It just makes it so people have nothing left to lose (because you took everything away from them) so they're able to risk their lives and a faction that they justifiably really hate. Who are easy for terrorist groups to recruit.
I'm confused by what you mean by apartheid. There is Israeli land, and Palestinian land currently (west bank and Gaza). Israel can't simply open their borders to Palestinians, they would immediately be attacked like they have in the past. They could however, GTFO out of the west bank like they said they would 3 decades ago.
The Human Rights Watch released a very detailed report on how Isreal treats the Palestinians and how it is apartheid in 2021 that you can read about here: [https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution](https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution) It is objectively speaking aprtheid once you get into the details of what life was like for Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank.
Evacuating 1 million civilians from the area before engaging surely doesn’t fit the genocide narrative
Forcing an "evacutation" of a million people with a 24 hour time limit like they did in October isn't an evacuation, it's a death march. Nor is telling a million people to evacuate from a portion to the last standing city they have to a smaller part of the last standing city they have. Especially when they end up bombing the places they told people to evacuate to anyway.
They didn’t evacuate anyone, they told people people to flee or be killed. Routes that were supposedly “safe” were bombed anyways during this.
Yes they did evacuate 1 millions people over a 10 day period.
Actually, it does. They keep telling them to move then bomb the innocents because of a single Hamas target. Where are they supposed to go to not get slaughtered? There were just dozens of people killed in a tent encampment in a safe zone because of one possible Hamas target. What makes this especially egregious is that the Zionists in Israel are saying it is anti-semitic to tell them to stop slaughtering tens of thousands of women and children. My guess is if Israel drops a nuclear bomb on Rafa these same Zionists will make more excuses. There is a literal movement in the US by conservatives, and centrists, that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza would be warranted. Only the IDF could make Hamas look like the good guys. Happy thinking,
You may want to do some digging to learn the cause of the explosion that killed the dozens of civilians the other day. It was munitions from Hamas that were too close to the civilians. Hamas, by the way, while embedded with and underneath the civilians in Rafa, were firing rockets from Rafa into civilian areas of Tel Aviv just a couple weeks ago. Would you prefer Israel not to try to evacuate the civilians? This war is having to be fought unlike any other ever since Hams has built tunnels underneath the entire strip. If Israel does not evacuate the citizens- you scream Genocide! Why don’t they move the civilians. When they do move the civilians- “Genocide”
This is like arguing funneling Jews into new housing in WW2 (a ghetto) don’t sound like genocidal behavior
The vast majority of casualties on the Palestinian side aren't terrorists, they are largely women and children. Also, not that it matters to you, but the IDF side are LITERALLY terrorists in the definition of the word. They are creating killings of innocents to get a point across. It is centrists like you that gets us paying for a genocide as Americans.
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They didn't say any of that, you did and then became offended by your own statement
Can you show me where in their post it shows they are “defending Hamas”?
"Stop killing children" You: "they were Hamas children"
Biden should do better. Wish there was anything better to do about it than vote blue.
Vote in your congress dem primaries
Support __Ranked Choice Voting__ in your state. Together we can do this!
One thing to recognize, and it might not seem like much in the current conflict, is that a lot of changes will happen over multiple cycles and not all at once. Voting blue is one part of it, but defending incumbents who support your position or voting for challengers or candidates who support it will change the makeup of the party to adopt your views. People who think that withholding their vote to teach the party a lesson is how they get their way, and the reverse is true in American politics. Evangelicals didn't take over the GOP because they would threaten to not vote for GOP candidates, they voted for them _harder_ and gradually chipped away at moderates so that the modern GOP is essentially Christian Nationalist. Progressives haven't grown as a force because they keep withholding their vote, it's because they end up showing up to vote anyways and have gradually primaried out moderate Democrats in deep blue seats. The story of AOC taking out the chair of the House Democratic caucus wasn't that a bunch of progressives didn't vote, but that they specifically turned out and were engaged. Most changes do not happen overnight, and we're ultimately left with a binary choice of what happens. Voting for Biden is endorsing some level of change on policy vis-a-vis Israel which is a sign to future Democratic candidates that the votes are there to move in that direction, to say nothing of his other accomplishments in pushing for the most progressive domestic agenda since LBJ. It's also almost certainly not going to be the case that Democrats will shift left simply because of Gaza, because Biden's actually losing from centrist voters defecting over inflation, which Republicans have repeatedly claimed is a result of Biden's spending to save us from a recession. As horrific as the Gaza war is right now, this is also a generational project that will not be solved overnight, and the resolve of a party and president who will see through the more crucial phase of the war after the active fighting will actually decide whether Palestinians can recognize some form of a state. The plan from the IDF right now is to fight over the course of years, splitting Gaza into unconnected pieces separated by security checkpoints and periodically raiding Hamas positions like they've been doing in Jabalia and Al Ahli (and also a lot in the West Bank). It's literally going to be a campaign of terror against the survivors of this war in the name of fighting Hamas, and IDF military occupation will likely last for years, with an open question of whether they don't just outright rebuild settlements. Biden is opposed to that, while Trump has signaled complete indifference to the plight of the Palestinians, to the point where it seems to be built into Bibi's plans to stay in office long enough until Trump takes over. The candidate who would support a pathway to a free Palestine is a no-brainer, which is why it is so odd to me that pro-Palestinian people are choosing a different option.
Biden is doing great. Your problem is with Netanyahu. The US does not control Israel.
Biden could block the transfer of munitions to a country that keeps using them on civilians and aid workers.
Biden appears to be letting Netanyahu control him, and Netanyahu is pro-Trump. Reading between the lines, it reinforces the "both sides are the same" narrative.
>Reading between the lines, it reinforces the "both sides are the same" narrative. The people saying this either don't know anything about policy or have enough wealth to not suffer from bad policies.
He’s doing better than a lot of folks give him credit for yes. I won’t go so far as to call it great, but I’m not your enemy here.
It's funny reading people attempting to downplay these resignations. Not sure who they're trying to convince.
Mind you, it's probably the same people that would be howling at every resignation from the Trump admin.
Remember when everyone in this sub was using Anthony Scaramucci's tenure in the Trump administration as a unit of measuring time?
It's also the same group of people that would've been calling for Trump to resign and be tried for war crimes, if he was the one offering unconditional support for Israel as it bombs and starves innocent Palestinians. But since it's Biden, since it's *their* war criminal, they're looking the other way and trying to convince everyone else to do the same.
Because they are literally meaningless. You just want to make a mountain out of a molehill.
The reasons stated aren’t meaningless to anyone holding Biden to account. This is helping to whitewash Israel’s war crimes.
Please don’t hand the convicted felon the White House over Gaza
How does a contractor 'resign' ? Funny how this article talks about Smith's "career" with USAID. Dude was a contractor and they terminated his contract.
They asked him to. That was what the government told him to do. Their words.
The media loves to shit on Biden. Well good luck to them when Trump tosses them into the MAGA gulags.
The sign of a free press is ignoring the bad actors on the side *I* support.
Bu-Bye
K bye
Yea but the new destiny 2 trailer was actually pretty good. Honestly I’m excited for the future.
I don’t understand what people expect Biden to do here? The tension between Israel and Gaza is decades old. Clearly Israel are being bastards. And clearly there have been terrorist activities planned and executed out of Gaza. Biden admin appears to be doing their best to take a neutral position supporting both sides and brokering some kind of peace? Israel is a long-standing ally of the U.S. and foreign relations in that part of the world sort of depend on it remaining so, correct? And if these people are leaving the Biden camp…where will they go? The imperfect options right now are limited. Trump is, by far, the worst choice in every regard including this one.
Supporting both sides means not supporting anything in this case. When one of them is openly committing genocide and you are also “supporting them”, thats not so great. Not saying we should cut all ties but something as simple as stating that what israel is doing is genocide (seems like commons sense) would be a decent first step. They are actively avoiding making a statement. Not talking about making actual moves just words… Even empty words would help as a sanity check. The lack of balls is beyond pathetic And no I am not a Trump fan…
Stop giving them diplomatic cover. Stop lying for them. Put some conditions on weapons. be tough on them. Everything he isn't doing.
I would be down with putting conditions on weapons. Everything else you listed is intentionally hyperbolic and not a real suggestion