Comment on What are the next steps for Americans to help prevent the worsening of genocide in Palestine?
Lauchs@lemmy.world 4 days agoIt’s not even privilege, just wildly ignorant or childish to see something horrible and decide “yup, can’t get worse than that!”
If you literally don’t understand that trump and Harris will have very different red lines, you don’t know enough to talk about this.
Sundial@lemm.ee 4 days ago
Buddy what part of the genocide of the Palestinians is already happening do you not understand? You want to sit there and say that Trump will genocide them even harder? The delusion of saying “Trust me, Harris will save the Palestinians” when she vocalized nothing but staunch support of Israel is what led the Democrats to lose all the Arab voters. The genocide of the Palestinians is already underway and Harris has made jt clear she doesn’t intend on stopping it.
Lauchs@lemmy.world 3 days ago
The older you get, the more you’ll realize it’s okay and even a good idea to just say “I don’t really know about this.”
To say that Harris and trump mean the same thing for the Palestinians is outright nonsensical. Some of the Israeli ministers (notably Smotrich) have been very explicit about the fact that trump’s win, among other things, makes annexation of the West Bank much more likely.
There’s a lot of background that you kind of really have to be in the weeds to catch but if you’ve been reading Foreign Policy and others, you’d know that while the Biden administration ought to have done more, there were still some red lines (annexation, hitting Iranian oil/nuclear facilities etc.) With trump in charge, it’s unclear which if any red lines still exist.
It’s a humanitarian crisis but to claim that Harris and trump mean the same thing is as downright silly as you can get. Saying things that are patenly nonsensical makes you look pretty danged silly.
Sundial@lemm.ee 2 days ago
There’s a lot I don’t know true. But there’s a lot I know as well. For example, I know that in Israel Netanyahu is ridiculously unpopular at the moment and is under criminal investigation. I know the only reason he’s still in power is because of a group of hard-right fanatics in the Knesset like Ben Gvir. I know this group has been pushing for the complete eradication of the Palestinians for some time now, including annexing the West Bank, and they are finally seizing on the moment. I also know that they are the ones pushing for a regional war with Iran. I know that the only one in Netanyahu’s war council who vocally said this war shouldn’t continue was the recently fired Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and was replaced with someone who wanted to continue the war. I know that lobbying groups such as AIPAC have spent a ridiculous amount of money lobbying the American Senate and Congress to let Israel do what they want. I know that Biden has received more money from these groups than any other senator in history. I know that Harris has repeatedly said that “Israel has a right to defend itself” even as they slaughter their way through innocents. I know that Tim Walz has said that he supports Israels right to expand it’s borders as they escalate the conflict with Lebanon and Israel. I know that Harris chose to campaign with war hawks like Liz Cheney in an effort to win Republican voters while ignoring a lot of Democrat voters.
You started this thread by implying that voting for Harris would have saved the Palestinians. I’m telling you that everything points to her not doing a dam thing. You want to sit there and talk about how maybe she would have talked them down from creating a regional war with Iran? Sure, go for it buddy. Maybe she would have. But don’t sit there and pretend like she, or the majority of Democrats, actually cared enough to stop Israel from performing their little genocide. Or the invasion of Lebanon for that matter. If they did, they would have done so by now. They chose to stick their head in the sand and pretend it wasn’t an issue. Meanwhile they literally lost all 7 of the swing states because of this attitude. The Arabs definitely made her lose Michigan, and there’s a strong case to be made that they could have helped her win Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Lauchs@lemmy.world 2 days ago
See, I think this is the issue. You’ve shared some of the very basics. Most explainer articles should (and do) include this info. And I think you’re confusing knowing a handful of basics with something approaching authority. Admittedly, I imagine you have given more context than most Tiktoks, so yay?
Here are a few other basics but that add context and illuminate the difference between Harris and trump:
About half of Palestinians live in the West Bank, which has basically been off limits for Israeli military incursions, despite the far right. In large part because of American red lines, Israel has mostly left the West Bank alone in this conflict.
The United State’s policy on Israel/Palestine has been to advocate for a 2 state solution (which the PLO has walked away from, repeatedly.) Donald already shred any pretense of supporting a 2 state solution when he recognized Jerusalem as capital of Israel. For the loudest and most loyal part of his base, the evangelicals, Israel must own all of its own territory in order to bring about the End Times. (yay.) So, there’s a definite possibility that trump actively encourages Israel to ramp up their move to a 1 apartheidish state and West Bank becomes Gaza without the restraint.
And yes, you might complain that Gaza is unrestrained but that’s pretty silly. Some 40k Palestinians have died, which is too many but at that rate, the war could go on for another half century and more than half the Palestinians would be around. (And of course, if you note that most of the casualties were in the first 4 months after Hamas murdered and/or raped more than a thousand civilians, and “only” ~ 10K have died since Februaryish, well, you should realize that’s a deaccelerating conflict.) Unfortunately, trump means that hard right/Bibi have a good chance of escalating things right back up. (The Biden administration has demanded more aid etc in exchange for continued support, something that’s highly unexpected from a trump administration.)
Meanwhile, somewhere between 2-3 million Palestinians, who don’t have the first world luxury to ignorantly declare things are the going to be the same, know how much worse things are about to get.
And of course on the American side, the notion that Harris would be able to override Biden while she’s VP is lunacy. Pray tell, when is the last time you saw a VP undermine their boss like that? (The closest I can think of was when Biden let slip that the administration was moving to codify gay marriage, but that’s not even close to the same ballpark.) Arguing for a radically different path while in office but without any authority is similarly nonsensical. (If the Harris administration would be different, that incentives Israel to go much harder now while they can and puts Biden into a no win scenario.)
Would I have liked the Democrats to do more? Absolutely. But to say that because Palestinians in Gaza are dying those in the West Bank should too suggests you are too ignorant to know the difference between Gaza and West Bank or too racist to care.
Finally, I’ll remind you that the original question was what can America do to prevent the situation from worsening. Electing Harris over trump is a no brainer move to prevent things from getting as bad as they can under trump. Then electing progressive Dems in the primaries so they can move Harris on this. With trump in power, the Democratic primaries and midterms are relatively meaningless and unlikely to help the Palestinians.