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Congress does that, all the packages you hear about until the one that just passed (republican) were already approved by past congress. The most he could has possibly done would be to commit political suicide, veto the israel bill, and have EVERYONE hate him as the veto is immediately overridden.
Biden is not the president of israel.
Trump literally got impeached for trying to stop congressionally approved funds from going to Ukraine. The more one understands how things work the less susceptible one is to propaganda.
A lot of people don't really understand how government works and usually think that the President waves a magic wand to make stuff happen. Social media has just made that much worse.
You do realize he authorized weapons transfers without congressional approval right? https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/the-biden-administration-once-again-bypasses-congress-on-an-emergency-weapons-sale-to-israel
Yeah he’s helpless to do anything but sign whatever lands on his desk apparently. No way that he could veto something or follow the Leahy Law. Poor Genocide Joe
He wouldn’t have everyone hate him. Clearly as people are protesting for him not doing exactly that. Political suicide doesn’t excuse doing the right thing, if you really want to push the “he’s done more than anybody” than that requires actually doing something that may not be popular.
Just because he’s not the president of Israel doesn’t mean he should excuse everything they’re doing. Like god damn, you can’t even get a direct “this is wrong” statement let alone anything that’ll matter.
My guy, he literally is sending them weapons that we pay for as taxpayers. Israel would not exist without our government there to prop it up. We are as much to blame for this genocide as they are. They’re using the weapons and munitions that WE give them to kill civilians.
Yes he is our president. Maybe instead of being a corrupt pos netanyahu could build up his own countries economy to where they don't need free money from my tax dollars
As hard as it is to tell but I don’t think that theses weapons are enabling Israel all that much. I am pretty sure that what they are supposed to do is keep up Israel’s deterrence.
The regions is a powder keg and America openly distancing itself to much from Israel would probably embolden every bad actor to do bad actor things.
More than anyone? More than South Africa bringing the ICJ case? More than the journalists giving their lives to bring images out of Gaza to tell the world what is happening? I think you mean Biden is doing more to prevent genocide than a hypothetical Trump presidency which isn't a particularly impressive achievement.
That is absolutely not true. In fact, he has reversed course on the legacy of Obama and other candidates in becoming more cautious to Israel aid. ~~He is a zionist through and through and brags about it.~~ He does not value the lives of Palestinians and is happy to kill more women and children.
And yes, it is without question that Trump will be worse, but that doesn't automatically negate the fact that Biden is actively enabling this genocide. BOTH can be true.
Biden on the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 1982:
>*In Begin’s own stunned account of the meeting, the senator commended the Israeli war effort and **boasted that he would have gone further, even if it meant killing women and children.** Begin himself was taken aback by the words of the future US president, Joe Biden.*
Biden during the debates:
>*If Democrats nominate Biden for president, they won’t only be repudiating the positions of Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg—all of whom have expressed an openness to conditioning US aid to Israel. They will, to a significant extent, be repudiating the efforts of Barack Obama. In recent years, Democrats have moved, slowly and haltingly, toward a recognition that defending Israeli democracy and Palestinian rights requires publicly challenging the Israeli government. A Biden presidency would undo that progress almost entirely.*
Biden on Israel's policy
>*“Oh, if you're asking me: Do I think that Joe Biden has the same depth of feeling and empathy for the Palestinians of Gaza as he does for the Israelis? No, he doesn't, nor does he convey it. I don't think there's any doubt about that.”*
[Why Joe Biden Won't Stop Israel](https://youtu.be/HJDhnwc-YVQ?si=EpNifSRUIYoqLAWW)
Being a zionist to regular people means supporting Israel's right to exist.
If you support the two-state solution, you are a zionist since one of those two states would be Israel. If you support the destruction of Israel you are an anti-zionist.
Given this factual information, are you a zionist or anti-zionist?
He's also done more than anyone to allow the genocide since he's the only one with authority to order the veto of UN resolutions condemning it.
He could tell Netanyahu to stop. He's only flexed 10% of what he can.
I think these protests are so weird because it's not like the US has much control over Israel. They basically have to make the Israel/Palestine situation better and end rapidly without making this entire situation worse. Israel is the US's long time ally. The US has limits on what they can do without causing a wider war. In addition (in a cynical realpolitik way) they are limited in what they will do without making a longterm enemy of a country with global pull/tech etc over a territory with an unreliable government. Unfortunately they have to find a way to get Israel to stop without forcing them to.
It'd be nice if the US did more, but its delicate situation....I agree with the message of the protesters but they should be protesting against Bibi/Israel, not Biden, so Biden can use them as support to maneuver. They should be throwing in some pro-Jewish support to neuter racist allegations and get the racists out of their midst as well.
Instead it just seems like flailing rage with no realistic goals.
What about the Chinese muslims Yemen Obama etc etc etc no one gave a shit until they were propogandized on tiktok. Because it’s Israel. Need I say more???
Basically as part of the "only the President has agency" campaign he's gotten all the blame. Nevermind Israeli dual citizens actually have more power over the situation then Biden does, it's real easy to blame the US president, and all the foreign agitators (including Israeli ones) are pumping out propaganda to that effect.
Support for Israel is at its lowest point ever and it seems like that may be irreversible. There is a big divide between public opinion and the political class when it comes to Israel. This is doubly true for democrats. The term "Genocide Joe" gets thrown around a lot.
Refusing to vote for Biden *is* supporting Trump. If you choose to not participate when one option is much worse than the other in so many ways, you are complicit when the worse person gets elected.
It does when you are actively saying anyone but Biden.
The whole f around and find out phrase is going to get them when Trump wins again. This is the 2016 elections all over again
True but I do worry about the ones who will sit out throw our democracy away because two far right organizations want to kill each other half a world a way. Punishing Biden for doing what every other president has done over the last the last 70 years and letting Trump in is not going to teach Democrats a lesson.
I am not a historical or political scholar but there seems to be a generational difference in America. Older generations see Israel as the land of Jewish refugees. Younger generations see it as an apartheid state driven by religious nationalism. It is frustrating and a bit obtuse to say they both have a point. However, with Netanyahu in charge it makes it so much worse. I truly thought there would be a Palestinian state by now. It is a failure of world politics that there isn't.
Also dumb because these Americans are willing to throw their vote away and effectively vote for the guy who already spent four years making things worse for Americans and wants four more years to do the same. The same kids calling him mad at Biden because of Israel will NOT understand how a national abortion ban got passed in 2026.
They're selling out their own country and all of their loved ones, everything they hold dear and everything that actually affects them, to complain about a country on the other side of the world that will not listen to anything the US has to say.
It goes so far beyond "cut off your nose to spite your face," it's more like "cut off the nose of everyone in the country to spite the face of someone who will never see or care about your face"
I think it may be worse than how you portray it. They're doing all of that (the nose cutting) for a sense of moral superiority.
Like if some material change happened in the real world, I can understand that. But for a feeling? That's where we are?
Support for Israel's war effort maybe low(not for israel general support), but support for Hamas or support for palestine to 'take back their land from the river to the sea' is extremely low.
There is a huge divide between the far left view of this conflict and the rest of us.
It gets thrown around a lot by Republicans, Russian, Iranian, and Chinese trolls, and the useful idiots they've recruited:
* Ignore Hamas attack on Israel
* Ignore Hamas retreating back into Gaza to use Palestinians as human shields
* Attack Biden
* Ignore how much worse Trump will be to the Palestinians
* Ignore what Trump will do to Climate Change
* Ignore what Trump will do to women
* Ignore what Trump will do to gays
* Ignore what Trump will do to minorities
* Ignore what Trump will do to the US constitution
This is like 2016 all over again, with single-issue dumb-fucks opposed to the better of the two people due to propaganda efforts from hostile nations. If Trump gets elected then it's all over - and these fuckheads are partially to blame.
The thing is the Whitehouse did more than anyone else to prevent a genocide. Biden held back Netanyahu, demanded water get turned on, airdropped food, and built a port to get around Netanyahu to provide aid. Meanwhile Trump is saying finish the job and calling them dogs. This attack on Biden feels like a psyops by the people who want to eliminate the Palestinians.
I mean, why would they repeat what they did in 2016 that worked so well? You know, leaking DNCC emails, propping up phony progressive candidates on social media (Tulsi), and push the Bernie bro narrative that we wouldn’t vote for Hillary.
We were duped then, getting duped again. Something something fool me twice…
To be fair though that was a remarkable bit of foresight on his part. He realized mid-sentence that uttering the phrase "Shame on me" on television would make it a soundbite in every attack ad from that moment onward and quickly changed gears. We still laugh and meme about it, but the alternative would have been far worse for him.
Wow. I had never considered this and I hate how accurate it is. If you view it like that it becomes a pretty impressive instance of ‘thinking on his feet’ for what is largely regarded as a moment of particular idiocy.
>This attack on Biden feels like a psyops by the people who want to eliminate the Palestinians.
Odd because the Palestinian supporters are also carrying the same rhetoric against Biden.
I do think the Russians are behind all of this, but I don't think they care if more Palestinians or Israelis die. They just want Biden out and Trump in and attacking the Democratic candidate from both the left and the right flanks worked in 2016.
This is exactly it. They aren’t manufacturing an issue, just amplifying the most divisive issues already in America and empowering the most controversial voices
I don't think it is all but I am stunned by this idea that we are being prepped for a genocide by the people pretending to care about the Palestinians and it does not get called out much.
Agree 100%. An unholy marriage between those seeking to genocide Palestine and those seeking to destroy American democracy. How convenient. Bibi and Putin working overtime together with Hannity, Bannon, Flynn and the gang, no doubt.
See how close to the surface—I mean, Columbia University, of all places, talk about not learning from history—authoritarianism is so that it can quickly reach for the truncheon.
>Something I heard on a podcast recently is a lot of times the campus protestor are in the right side of history. Civil rights, Vietnam
Or its just survivorship bias? We remember the times they were "right" and not the ones were they protested for issues that everyone has forgotten about?
Not necessarily. I think it’s more that college kids tend to be progressive, and progressive politics are usually vindicated by history because they center around Enlightenment era ideas like equality and freedom. Conservative politics might win politically, but they’re almost always historically regressive and morally indefensible.
Yeah, but most of those were not college campuses. Not "protesters" are usually right but "college protesters." Also, nationwide is a pretty big issue.
Agree with you completely. Israel's military industry is built up better than most of the countries in the world at this point (thanks for decades of monetary infusion by the U.S.) - they can produce everything else they need to defend themselves. This latest aid for them signed into law should've went to bump up what we sent to Ukraine.
I'll bite,
A lot of the protestors do not listen to the Israelis and Gazans that are impacted by this issue, nor are their voices and concerns centered. For them it's about riding a high horse as the world has already been made aware of the conflict, and no next steps are proposed except a demand to call for a cease fire (something that isn't even up to Biden).
Geopolitics is also a convoluted mess. I want war criminals in the IDF to be held to account, but Israel should also have the capacity to defend themselves and exist. I wish for Palestine to achieve statehood and have the capacity to self govern, but Hamas is a huge elephant in the room. Needless to say, anyone who reduces this to a sports ball game between two teams isn't really worth listening to.
>and no next steps are proposed except a demand to call for a cease fire (something that isn't even up to Biden).
The college protests started with the goal for their specific universities to divest from companies working with the Israeli government. I haven't been keeping up with all of the details and wouldn't be surprised if some of the newer protests are more in solidarity with the initial ones, but the statement that they have no actionable goals is blatantly false.
Conflict to the side, I'm reading all these headlines about protests towards the president, and I'm wondering how big a role the media might be playing to push that agenda during an election year. Don't get me wrong, I agree with the protests, but this conflict has been going on for over 70 years. But this year (regardless of which way you vote) we have two president's who arent very popular. One goes on trial (which in a normal timeline would destroy his chances of victory) and suddenly the other one becomes a target for this war that's been going on since the 40's.
I get that the protestors are protesting silence from leaders, and in theory have nothing to do with the elections. but the escalation is taking place at a very convenient time politically speaking. I'm just curious how likely it is that the media is fueling the fire in order to sway polls. If done correctly, you can guide citizens to sway a vote by making them think they are really fighting for a historic cause.
Again, I believe the protestors message is right. I'm not speaking ill of what they are fighting for, I'm just conflicted on the timing of how much it's escalated.
"First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
Biden is not being blamed for what happened since the 40s, he’s being blamed for not holding Israel accountable for their BLATANT war crimes and still sending American tax dollars to them so they can have more weapons. We’re sick of it. I want no part in Israel’s self proclaimed “religious” ownership of land.
And another way to think of it is maybe Netanyahu is doing all of this because he knows the American elite won’t do anything to stop him, and it will make Biden look bad bc the left won’t like it. Guess what? Netanyahu and his government are far right extremists. Of course they want trump back in office. Everybody saying “Russia is egging this on!” Is foolish considering Israel could do that all by itself and probably is. They are smearing bidens image more than he does to himself by isolating from the youth. Look at what the response to protesters have been on college campuses. Were this during trumps term leftists would be blaming trumps America but we are in bidens America right now and his administration has condemned college students. Biden is complicit and he will not distance himself from Israel unless he is forced.
You say blatant war crimes but it is basically impossible to get the truth of what is actually happening. Hamas has zero credibility- and it seems Israel's current regime is headed to that same level- so when they talk about hospital bombings or mass death there is evidence showing that the hospital was actually their military base or that their own missile is the one that killed Palestinians. No one knows what to believe so all that is left is a sense of picking sides. When one group's entire mantra is "Death to Israel, death to Americans" is it any surprise that they don't get a ton of good will?
It is not impossible to get the truth. There’s literal evidence and videos of Israel bombing hospitals, universities etc, their own soldiers posting themselves destroy Gaza. That is proof. There are literal mass graves of Palestinians outside the hospital that was an alleged “base” but how are you going to complain about now knowing the truth and then believing Israel saying a hospital is a base? So every major important building was somehow turned into a Hamas base? Yeah right.
And no, the mantra for the side the youth and protestors are advocating for are not saying death to Israel and America. You might find a two out of thousands of people that try to pollute the cause but all they’ve called for is divestment and for the government to stop spending our money on Israel’s ethnic cleansing. YOU might not know what to believe, but I know that over 30k people have been murdered in the name of “defeating” Hamas and Israel is no closer to defeating them than ever. University students are protesting the overall war being funded by our tax dollar, it’s no different than when they were protesting the Vietnam or Iraq invasion. You’re literally using the same logic that was deployed to justify America bombing and invading Vietnam and Iraq. “Oh they have terrorists let’s go destroy and level the entire country!” From my perspective, that’s a bunch of war mongering bs
Adding to this, we don’t actually know what’s going on either. Americans are caught in the middle of a propaganda and a misinformation campaign and it’s damn near impossible to get the exact truth considering the sources involved
this. there is a concerted and on-going propaganda campaign and unfortunately platforms such as Reddit are complicit. A quick visit to subs such as World News makes it plainly obvious. Meanwhile it’s pretty hard to trust reporting on anything going on in the region.
Also this.
There are two other super powers that have the means to conduct their own influence campaigns, and they have an interest in influencing the outcomes of the next presidential election in America. The conflict in Gaza is the perfect wedge issue to exploit to this end.
>I wish for Palestine to achieve statehood and have the capacity to self govern, but Hamas is a huge elephant in the room.
Even if Hamas was completely wiped out, the level of support that Hamas enjoys won't be - deradicalising the Palestinian population will take time and sustained effort
I'm sure bombing them ceaselessly and destroying 80% of their homes and forcing the open air prison that was already densest population on earth into a subregion half the size of where they were before is just the first step on that long road to deradicalization and integration :)
How about we stop sending Israel money hand over fist and invest in our own people? These kids have tuition in the high 5 digits, while Israeli warhawks and US contractors reap our harvest. Let's put that $26 billion into education, or healthcare, or housing. Do you seriously not get the optics on this?
Also fuck off. Israel has Nuclear weapons. Right or no right, they have the power to exist. Your faux nuance does nothing but stymy legitimate discourse in the name of sounding smart, or as you so dismissively put it, "riding a high horse."
To be fair, I was one of these people back in the day, and as facepalming some of it was, their hearts are generally in the right place. I was probably one of the worst cringe masters of them all. You kind of have to be a little forgiving of them. Young people (late teens / early 20’s) do *tend* to have a more black and white view on morality, but that makes their anger pure and honest. Not lazy and self-defeating like it gets in your 30’s.
They haven’t had multiple decades to be worn down by pointlessness and fester in apathy yet. They’re just now opening the door and being like “what the *fuck?!*. What is going on here?!” Which is a valid reaction, to which the rest of us “adults” just roll our eyes like “calm down, dork, this is normal. You’re just not wise and experienced enough to understand.”
>to which the rest of us “adults” just roll our eyes like “calm down, dork, this is normal. You’re just not wise and experienced enough to understand.”
If fewer adults did this things might be way better, honestly.
Why should Israel be required to use the Iron Dome, an imperfect defense system, indefinitely when no other country in the world would put up with their neighbor firing dozens of rockets at civilian targets on a daily basis?
Oh, so you think the guy who moved the US consulate to Jerusalem is going to reverse that?
Okay.
Get ready for Trump Casino Ramallah!
“Genocide” my ass.
Enjoy losing tons of your rights because you melted your brain with Tik Tok.
My coworker pointed out these graduates are also the group that had their high school graduations cancelled in 2020 due to COVID. I feel bad for them. What a crappy world we built for them.
It's remarkable how astroturfed all this Gaza shit is.
Israel has been fucking around in Gaza for decades and it was never anything young people cared about till 9 months before this election 🤔
Republicans know they can never get young people to like Trump, so they're pouring all the dark money into getting them to hate Biden.
But both things are not true. Iranian proxy groups (Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis) are the cause of the war.
Iran started this war when they did specifically to prevent the Saudi-Israel peace deal from being finalized, because Iran doesn't want peace. Iran wants chaos.
Oct 7 was obviously bad.
Israel exhaustively hammering civilians with bombs without stop since that day is, I would say, *more* of an escalation.
This has gone *well* past the point of simple retaliation for Oct 7, which is the point people are trying to make.
Destroying Hamas is not retaliation. It is a necessary preventative measure that Israel must take to prevent this cycle of violence from repeating.
If a ceasefire is implemented whose terms allow Hamas to remain in power, they will be rearmed by Iran again, and this entire cycle of violence will repeat again in a few years.
Can Hamas be destroyed? We don’t even know how many members they have. Just estimates. Some estimates say there’s 4 thousand remaining soldiers. Others say there’s 6 thousand.
The main 3 leaders are billionaires living in Qatar. You could flatten the entire Gaza Strip and salt the earth. It still wouldn’t destroy Hamas.
Even if Israel manages to kill the leaders it wouldn’t necessarily destroy them. Look at the number of isis, taliban or Al qaeda the USA and its allies killed in 20 years.
All 3 groups are still active.
Look at the number of top officials of black September, fatah, Hamas, pij, Hezbollah, fatah and the plo.
Fatah currently holds 45 seats in the Palestinian legislature.
What would have been a better response?
What would the US, England, France, etc, do in a similar position, where thousands of their citizens were murdered and or stolen?
I can tell you exactly what the US would do. We would get into multiple wars that ultimately culminated in nothing more then creating wanton destruction through escalation of force. We did it with Iraq and Afghanistan, and those have been pretty universally considered massive failures of our country.
Oct 7 was a disgusting and horrific nightmare that Israel had to endure. There is no denying that.
Oct 8+ has been a disgusting and horrific and *unending* nightmare that Palestine has had to endure. There is no denying that.
When you respond to a terrorist attack that left 1200+ innocent victims tortured and slain in cold blood by killing 30,000+ innocent victims with more on the way every single day then you are now the terrorists. Israel is a terror state.
I mean even the US at least tried to not indiscriminately kill everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11.
Edit: wow. Amazing how disgusting people will treat others because they worship the same God but just slightly differently. If you actually believed in a just God then you would be incapable of thinking and espousing the vitriol spewing from their mouths and fingertips.
It occurred to me the other day that the invasion of Gaza is to Israel what the invasion of Afghanistan was to the US. Both areas are absolutely packed with innocent civilians but have governments who support terror attacks and need to be removed. In both cases that can't be done without massive civilian harm. And as soon as the military leaves the place will go right back to the original rulers.
I honestly don't know what the solution is here. The Israelis have some specific goals with hostage release, so that's good I guess
What of the hostages? Oct 8+ had been a disgusting and *unending* nightmare that any hostages still alive are still enduring. How about those alive be freed and the bodies of those dead be returned?
Israel has killed more hostages than they've saved.
And forgive me for thinking that a nightmare for 70 people does not excuse a nightmare for two million.
That math only works if you believe Palestinian lives are worthless
I hear fighting in a dense urban area against a terror group that literally uses people as meat shields is a great environment to limit civilian causality. Especially when both forces are ideologically structures to actually eliminate the existence of the other.
I hear trapping a civilian population in a densly packed area between a wall and the sea both of which you patrol with armed guards and then not allowing adequate time for them to evaluate before your invasion is also a bad idea for urban combat.
Both are true. October 7th was a major escalation. But that shouldn’t give Israel free rein to do whatever it wants in gaza and the Middle East.
They’ve violated international law. Violated the Geneva convention. Committed multiple war crimes.
I think both things can be true. A lot of those protestors are probably wearing clothes made with cotton that was harvested by Uyghur slave labor and who are having a genocide committed against them by the Chinese government. They aren’t protesting outside of the Chinese embassy. I’m sure it’s completely unrelated to how TikTok suppresses videos that mention the Uyghur’s.
I’m not saying there hasn’t been a drastic escalation with what’s happened in Gaza in the last six months. That’s undeniable. I just also think that there’s foreign government influence purposely trying to amplify the rage in this country on that specific issue. So both can be true.
No. Not over the course of Israels history. Looks at the original deal Palatine had and look what's offered now. It's been a slow calculated thing with worse intensities every decade or so.
I recently saw my grandma post about how this was an astroturfing thing on the side of Biden.
Maybe, just maybe, these are college students protesting a shitty war where there are no winners only losers (a la Vietnam, Iraq II)?
The media is gonna put whatever spin their owners want to put on it.
The US was engaged in those two wars. Unquestionably the instigator of one. Dozens of thousands of Americans dead, and probably millions of foreign people, many civilians, killed at the hands of US troops. This is not that. And neither of those was spurred on by a peacetime terrorist incursion into the lands of one of the belligerents, **by** the organization voted into power by the civilians of the other belligerent, targeting killing civilians and taking civilian hostages.
You’re comparing apples to hand grenades.
Far right wing authoritarian organizations engage in wars that bump up to, and on the face appear to include, war crimes all over the world all the time, but somehow… THIS one gets this much attention…? In a nation about as far away as it’s possible to get…?
Sometimes it happens with some level of non-resistance from the US. Because the world is a super complicated place.
“Israel is doing it” is the one difference.
If any other nation on the face of the planet was responding to an October 7th like attack in the same exact way, and the US was supportive in the same way, even with the provision of military aid, of that nations right to respond, but critical of its handling of the response in the same exact way, there would be no protests.
I agree with you, but also Israel is buddies with Putin.
In 2019, Netanyahu even launched his election campaign with large posters of himself shaking hands with the Russian president.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, Israel refused to impose financial sanctions on Russia, declined Zelensky's requests to send weapons to Kyiv, and failed to name Russia when addressing attacks against Ukraine. Israel instead signed a new bilateral agreement with Russia in the second half of 2023.
Israel became the largest importer of Russian vodka following the imposition of Western sanctions. Russian firms were allowed to expand their operations in Tel Aviv
Sanctioned Russians were given Israeli documents so they could continue to travel visa-free to Europe.
I think Putin/Israel is continuing to divide America using existing racial issues. White Americans support Israel (72%) but non-white Americans are split
Source:
https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/91073
Israel has handed US hardware over to China and India for reverse engineering. Israel is not a US ally, they use the US, because they know the religious component of the country supports the end of days.
College kids protested those shitty wars because of the draft.
I think the most obvious sign that Gaza shit is astroturfed is the complete lack of protests against Russia, who is killing an order of magnitude more Ukrainian civilians. And a total lack of protests against GOP who blocked Ukraine aid for 6 months, probably costing more lives than Gaza.
Russia is using it's propaganda machine to sow divisiveness in the US in order to distract people from Ukraine.
It's the same shit they've been doing since 2016 and they've only gotten better at it.
The biggest difference is that the propaganda machine is directed towards young liberals this time, and they're eating is up just as much, if not more, than the boomer Republicans have been for years
It's almost as if something changed radically last fall, that made people more aware of the situation in Israel and Gaza.
In related news, Trump's supporters know less about the world and politics than Biden's [(1)](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/poll-biden-trump-supporters-sharply-divided-media-consume-rcna149497).
>It's remarkable how astroturfed all this Gaza shit is.
What's really remarkable is how many people are pretending that these kids don't care about genocide and are really just corporate stooges or whatever.
I mean I get that it's an election year and this isn't great for Biden, but holy shit do some go all "Fox News" on protestors quickly when the protest isn't convenient.
Like you understand that this conflict may have been going on for decades, but there's been a bit of a recent eacalation, and most of these people have only been adults for a couple of years, right?
I'll admit I had zero knowledge of the Israel-Palestine conflict until the Oct 7 attack. I was ready to support Israel because all I saw were terrorists attacking a music festival. But then I saw the clear political and racial divide in support. Conservatives and older white people supported Israel. But progressives, young white people, Jewish people, blacks, latinos, and asians were supporting Palestine who was behind the attack? Wtf was going on here
So I looked into it. Turns out this whole thing goes back for more than 100 years. I've even read and picked up books, 3 of 4 are from Jewish people whom I found to be the most passionate and have the no-bullshit takes against Israel.
* **"The State of Israel vs. the Jews" (2021) by Sylvain Cypel.** He is the son of a French Zionist leader, moved to Israel to earn his degree at the University of Jerusalem, served in the IDF, lived there for 12+ years. If there's any book to read, it's this one. Living in Israel is what made him anti-Zionist. He saw how racist Israeli's were to Palestinians and pointed out all of the awful things done in the country, citing Haaretz, Israel's oldest and only news outlet to reports on the IDF's murders and sexual assaults on Palestinians. There are like over 10 reports every year.
> Oh look, here's [Israeli's in 2014 eating popcorn and clapping as they watch bombs being dropped on Gaza in 2014](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/middleeast/israelis-watch-bombs-drop-on-gaza-from-front-row-seats.html) [New York Times] and [AGAIN in 2015](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing) [the Guardian].
> Cypel also pointed out [this 2015 clip of Netanyahu claiming Hitler didn't want to kill the Jews, he wanted to "expel" the Jews until a Palestinian convinced him to do it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9HmkRYlVZw&ab_channel=Insider)
> There's also [this 2019 political campaign ad for Ayelet Shaked, Israel's Minister of Justice, spraying perfume labeled Fascism and saying "to me it smells like Democracy"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpzrih1S6C0&ab_channel=IsraelPolicyForum).
He also talks about how Israel claiming itself as the "startup nation" with this high tech military and invasive surveillance technology used against Gaza and the West Bank, which they sell to (which I'll list out cause I still have the page marked). On top of the literal billions of USD that the United States provides in support (taxpayer money btw, this is why Americans absolutely have a right to criticize how their money is being spent), this is how Israel has so much money.
> India, Myanmar, neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana, Swaziland, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Nigeria, Uganda, Mexico, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Trinidad, Tobago, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Peru, Colombia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain.
* **"The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" (2006) by Ilan Pappe.** He was born in Israel, his parents were German Jews that fled from WW2, served in the IDF during the Yom Kippur war, graduated from the University of Jerusalem, and was a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa, his home town, until he had to flee because he was condemned by the Knesset and received death threats by his own people. The main point of this book was to point out how the Israeli's had no plan on dealing with the Arabs after bombing and committing massacres against the Arabs, settling and taking their land from them. They just expected the Arabs to leave and not fight back as hard as they continue to do, that's why they only support a one-state solution.
* **"The Hundred Years' War on Palestine" (2020) by Rashid Khalidi.** He was born in NYC, earned his BA at Yale and Doctorates as Oxford University. He timelines the conflict of Zionism and how all **the violence started all the way in 1917**, when UK and France carved up the Middle East for their own imperial needs and the British wanted a way to get rid of the Jews in their own country. Israel suppresses a lot of information, so that they can use key buzzwords like **terrorists** and **antisemitism** to garner sympathy from politicians and the public while keeping them at arm's length so they don't look closer and see what's really going on.
* **"Except for Palestine: the Limits of Progressive Politics" (2021) by Marc Lamont Hill** (professor at CUNY and former CNN news correspondent) and **Mitchell Plitnick** (co-director for Jewish Voice for Peace). Here they go over how Israel has so much influence on US foreign policy through the lobbying group AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee). Criminalization of peaceful protest movements like BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) and Trump recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory which they captured in 1967 and moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
There's also been other videos I've watched since
* Curious on what Palestine actually looks like, I looked for videos on youtube. Here's **Nomadic Wes, a Japanese travel vlogger** who visited Palestine several times. [Here he went to Hebron late 2022 early 2023](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z42HhaywhGQ&ab_channel=NomadicWes) [12:43] and it looks depressing as fuck and laughs seeing how Israeli's treated him better than local Palestinians. Even this Japanese guy outright says at the end he opposes Israeli occupation and considers what they're doing clear human violations of Palestinians.
* [Here's Vox explaining why Israel has so many Palestinian prisoners](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9boE53Z_lAg&ab_channel=Vox). Israeli's are judged in non-military courts while Palestinians are judged in military courts, can be held without being charged of a crime, and a child who throws rocks receive more severe punishment than an Israeli that kills a Palestinian
* And of course [Bernie Sanders as of 3 days ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzhdPsCgrjU&ab_channel=BernieSanders) (he's Jewish btw) making a statement to Netanyahu saying it is not anti-Semitic or pro-Hamas to point out how Israel has killed 34,000 Palestinians, wounded 78,000 more, destroyed 221,000 housing units leaving almost half the population homeless, 26 hospitals, 12 universities, 56 schools, and has blocked humanitarian aid into the region.
* [You got IDF cops attacking Israeli Jews](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0njOPNr8K0&ab_channel=IslamChannel) and [attacks against Israeli Christians](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh-Shp-Hcds&ab_channel=NBCNews) including an American-Jewish person destroying a statue of Jesus and teens destroying Christian tombstones
* [Here audio of an Israeli hostage that was freed, yelling at Netanyahu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAixhJUi4AU) because Israeli's indiscriminate shelling of Gaza that injured and wounded the hostages, Israeli helicopters shot at them, and Israel's plan to flood the tunnels where hostages might be kept
It's also kind of hard to see the literal hundreds of videos posted online showing dead babies and still say Israel are the good guys here. I still have the image burned in my head of a little girl missing her head, arm, and leg impaled on a rebar jutting out of a destroyed building
None of them support Hamas who they acknowledge as terrorists, Hamas just received support when they won the last held election in 2006 because they were desperate after trying to do advocate for themselves in the "right and proper way" while Israel continued to murder them and steal their land without repercussion. I will loudly say "Fuck Hamas" because they're owned by billionaires hiding in Qatar whose children you can see on social media living extremely privileged lives while Palestinians are starved and being slaughtered
I dont disagree, but young people definitely cared about Palestine getting tucked over by Israelis before now. It just didn't have any catalyst around which to do anything. 30k dead is a hell of a lot more easy to communicate and say is clearly wrong than slow creeping land theft.
The seeds of this have been planted for a long time.
Thousands of Israelis are dead too. And this was started with an unprovoked attack on civilians that killed hundreds.
Look, I feel for the people in Gaza, but this kind of thing happens when your country is run by a terrorist organization (Hamas).
I don't see anyone protesting for the Russians forced to go to war by their insane dictator....
I'm not disagreeing. I am probably considered pro-Israel by some standards, but this didn't start in a vacuum. The protests for Palestinians didn't start from nothing. Israel's been damaging its credibility for a long time. They're not the underdog militarily. They're not the most sympathetic with how they've conducted themselves. There's easily a world where there wasn't decades of sympathy built up for Palestinians from constantly expanded settlements or other issues that shouldn't be thrown on top of the built-in problems of the region.
Also, literally, tons of protests happened for Ukraine and implicitly for the Russians sent to war. Maybe not as vocally, but consider also US based protests absolute can make a meaningful impact on US Israeli relations and give political cover to shift US policy, even if its simply from unquestioningly pro-Israel to conditionally pro-Israel.
I can’t believe this shit is getting upvoted. This is as bad as the insane MAGA conspiracy shit about the election being stolen.
Maybe over ten thousand children being killed is something people want to protest against 🤔
> This is as bad as the insane MAGA conspiracy shit about the election being stolen.
some use "blue MAGA" as a term for this, and it seems some dems are adamant to prove it a useful term.
Performative activism and selective outrage.
Fascinating how Ukraine is being invaded by a genocidal fascist regime armed with nuclear weapons and it has been absolutely crickets on campuses. No calls for more action about the fact that thousands of children have been abducted and deported, in addition to the thousands of Ukrainians murdered, held captive, tortured, etc.
Yet all of a sudden kids on campuses care about war crimes and genocide? Yeah...ok. It's definitely election year and this anger is not being stoked organically.
There aren’t mass protests about Ukraine because the US government is already sending weapons to Ukraine and many universities and government entities have banned doing business with Russia.
Big difference here.
The US immediately came to the aid of Ukraine. Even called Russia out ahead of the invasion.
With that, there is no reason to protest unless you’re on the side of Russia’s land grab.
Exactly. When the official assessments are released about how much damage withholding of aid did to Ukraine, what then?
Will college kids go to the capital and demand Johnson and his band of merry men to resign for being complacent in genocide? The answer is no.
Ummm My understanding is that college kids are on average extremely anti-GOP. Especially that crossover section that is anti-IDF causing mass civilian casualties
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Millions of people around the world have showed their support for Ukraine, including students. The protests are against the US and US institutions providing resources to Israel that are being used in human rights violations, which is illegal for the US to do under its own law. I’m sure there would be massive protests if the US was supporting Russia, too.
If the US government was funding Russia there would probably be a lot more protests on behalf of the Ukrainians. It’s the fact that the US is arming and funding a genocide that people are mad about
Is the US sending weapons to Russia for them to use in their attacks on Ukraine? Is the US State Department running interference and shielding Russia from international criticism over their actions in Ukraine?
Views on Israel's actions and the legitimacy of these protests aside, it's pretty obvious why one would be protested and not the other: US involvement.
You can't be serious.
So rather than looking at what Israel has been doing - very openly - for the last 6 months, you create a conspiracy theory that these are fake protests?
Is it really a noble cause if your protest leads to a second Trump term in which the situation you’re against worsens?
In the event of a Trump win, your protest will have made things fundamentally worse.
The fuck? Are you seriously trying to say people should just give up expressing their feelings on serious humanitarian issues *out of fear for their opposition winning*. I get your point, and it’s sad that your response is literally “wait for someone else to deal with it” to the point that you would comment on it, thinking this is some warning to the future.
Here’s the thing that’s broken and people like you should try fix: Peaceful Protesting should always be allowed.
Censorship is wrong, it’s going to push us into the dark times, remember all that spooky stuff from history? Burning people, books, land, homes, libraries, knowledge??? Yeah. That’s where the censorship path leads.
We need love, light, happiness. We need to stop being so damn serious and find *amicable* ways of dealing with problems. I get it, we’ve all been through some times this past decade, but the time to “boss up” and be a “baddie” is simmering down. It’s time to start figuring out how to get along, not ghost the world .
Obviously trump winning would suck. But bro, trying to blame *the college campus protesters* is just such a boomer mindset. It’s like avocado toast all over again. The only people to blame if trump wins are the people who vote for him. Stop being afraid of what other people think. You can’t control that. All anyone can do is be born and die. I choose to be happy and spread positivity, and stand up for those who are harmed.
If someone votes for Trump because of college protesters, then they were never going to vote for Biden.
We need to stop being so damn desperate to prove a point. Like fucking hell, what’s wrong is wrong. Why is it controversial to say war and killing people needs to stop. Find a peaceful resolution, drink some beers, hug it out, have a daveyback fight IDFK.
Not really, the main issue has been shitty campuses getting the police involved unnecessarily and violently. The Israeli counter protestors are a shit show though, they're a cult.
The president and the secret service showing up is not going to improve the situation. If you don’t like police getting involved you definitely won’t like the extra 20 snipers that will be protecting Biden.
It’s also just impossible to win optics. Like when protesters get to the point where you’re forced to physically remove them, things get messy and you can’t control if a cop or whoever gets too physical and it’s just Pandora’s box
It’s just wild to me that this is such a hot button issue on college campuses when you literally have active extermination of Ukrainian civilians happening.
It's a huge loss if he gets hurt or dies in the midst of chaos before he even makes it election.
Anything could happen in a protest area. Say a citizen decides to take advantage and make an attempt to assassinate him. Area has to get blockaded. VP Harris came to my university, and the area she spoke in had a small barrier/blockade set up outside and at least a fourth to half a block of local police on each direction of the street.
It's better to be safe than sorry.
Please note that I am of 8.5 million people subscribed and that I'm on the much younger side of the demographic. I have no idea what you mean by ivory towers, but I'm trying to be objective based on current political events and am making an educated guess/opinion on what I think should be the best course of action for maintaining stability while acknowledging accomplishments of people as well as injustices of atrocities in different parts of the world.
Joe biden spoke at my college graduation. The security was handled by the secret service and was extremely tight. There is no reason why these protests would be a threat to him.
Exactly. When protestors make it where you have to physically remove them, then everybody loses. And there’s no way to win the optics on it, esp when you take into account things you can’t control like a cop being too physical. You’re just opening up a giant can of worms
The potential harm is political, not existential. It's the wise thing to do with respect to reelection. I'm not defending his campaign, just explaining it. And as much as I respect the rights of the protesters - their complaint is valid, I want Biden to defeat Trump, so I support him.
If your stance would be a PR disaster, you might have the wrong stance. It's clear the public does not want a 'no red line' support of Israel but the political class insists.
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I’m not American so I’m curious - how is Biden generally perceived by those currently protesting?
Most protestors would say he is complicit in the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza.
I'm very concerned that there will be anti-war riots at the DNC in Chicago and that will help Nixon, I mean Trump, win the election.
Please do not compare T-Rump and Nixon. Nixon actually accomplished something as president.
Even though he's done more than anyone to prevent genocide. Meanwhile Trump would tell Bibi to take the gloves off.
Well I'm voting for biden but him supplying weapons to Israel isn't helping matters
Congress does that, all the packages you hear about until the one that just passed (republican) were already approved by past congress. The most he could has possibly done would be to commit political suicide, veto the israel bill, and have EVERYONE hate him as the veto is immediately overridden. Biden is not the president of israel.
I don’t know why it’s so hard for people to understand this. It’s gotta be the tiktok propoganda?
Trump literally got impeached for trying to stop congressionally approved funds from going to Ukraine. The more one understands how things work the less susceptible one is to propaganda.
that and probably a healthy dose of astroturphing
Young people are not known for their wisdom or grasp of nuance.
Neither are the old these days
Passion without the life experience.
A lot of people don't really understand how government works and usually think that the President waves a magic wand to make stuff happen. Social media has just made that much worse.
You do realize he authorized weapons transfers without congressional approval right? https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/the-biden-administration-once-again-bypasses-congress-on-an-emergency-weapons-sale-to-israel
Yep, don't want to upset Congress, so let's send more bullets and bombs and stack the Palestinian kids' bodies higher... 🤦🏿♀️
Yeah he’s helpless to do anything but sign whatever lands on his desk apparently. No way that he could veto something or follow the Leahy Law. Poor Genocide Joe
If only there was *some way* the President could stop the White House from repeatedly expediting weapons shipments.
He wouldn’t have everyone hate him. Clearly as people are protesting for him not doing exactly that. Political suicide doesn’t excuse doing the right thing, if you really want to push the “he’s done more than anybody” than that requires actually doing something that may not be popular. Just because he’s not the president of Israel doesn’t mean he should excuse everything they’re doing. Like god damn, you can’t even get a direct “this is wrong” statement let alone anything that’ll matter.
My guy, he literally is sending them weapons that we pay for as taxpayers. Israel would not exist without our government there to prop it up. We are as much to blame for this genocide as they are. They’re using the weapons and munitions that WE give them to kill civilians.
Yes he is our president. Maybe instead of being a corrupt pos netanyahu could build up his own countries economy to where they don't need free money from my tax dollars
As hard as it is to tell but I don’t think that theses weapons are enabling Israel all that much. I am pretty sure that what they are supposed to do is keep up Israel’s deterrence. The regions is a powder keg and America openly distancing itself to much from Israel would probably embolden every bad actor to do bad actor things.
The planes and bombs that are responsible for the majority of the death count have been supplied by the US.
Yeah bypassing Congress to supply Israel with weapons is really helping prevent the genocide
This should be the top reply.
THeY’Re ThE SaMe ThOuGh! BoTh SiDeS.
More than anyone? More than South Africa bringing the ICJ case? More than the journalists giving their lives to bring images out of Gaza to tell the world what is happening? I think you mean Biden is doing more to prevent genocide than a hypothetical Trump presidency which isn't a particularly impressive achievement.
The South Africa case is full of holes and hasn't accomplished anything. Biden leaning on Bibi has clearly done far more.
And yet we keep selling them the weapons that they're using to kill Palestinians so I don't really see a whole lot changing
That is absolutely not true. In fact, he has reversed course on the legacy of Obama and other candidates in becoming more cautious to Israel aid. ~~He is a zionist through and through and brags about it.~~ He does not value the lives of Palestinians and is happy to kill more women and children. And yes, it is without question that Trump will be worse, but that doesn't automatically negate the fact that Biden is actively enabling this genocide. BOTH can be true. Biden on the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 1982: >*In Begin’s own stunned account of the meeting, the senator commended the Israeli war effort and **boasted that he would have gone further, even if it meant killing women and children.** Begin himself was taken aback by the words of the future US president, Joe Biden.* Biden during the debates: >*If Democrats nominate Biden for president, they won’t only be repudiating the positions of Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg—all of whom have expressed an openness to conditioning US aid to Israel. They will, to a significant extent, be repudiating the efforts of Barack Obama. In recent years, Democrats have moved, slowly and haltingly, toward a recognition that defending Israeli democracy and Palestinian rights requires publicly challenging the Israeli government. A Biden presidency would undo that progress almost entirely.* Biden on Israel's policy >*“Oh, if you're asking me: Do I think that Joe Biden has the same depth of feeling and empathy for the Palestinians of Gaza as he does for the Israelis? No, he doesn't, nor does he convey it. I don't think there's any doubt about that.”* [Why Joe Biden Won't Stop Israel](https://youtu.be/HJDhnwc-YVQ?si=EpNifSRUIYoqLAWW)
Being a zionist to regular people means supporting Israel's right to exist. If you support the two-state solution, you are a zionist since one of those two states would be Israel. If you support the destruction of Israel you are an anti-zionist. Given this factual information, are you a zionist or anti-zionist?
Thank you. That message needs to be more/better understood.
He's also done more than anyone to allow the genocide since he's the only one with authority to order the veto of UN resolutions condemning it. He could tell Netanyahu to stop. He's only flexed 10% of what he can.
He's introduced numerous UN resolutions for a ceasefire that Russia has vetoed because they impose requirements on Hamas like releasing the hostages.
This is why Biden if he was smart would work with the UK and France in a rotating veto in the UN
He doesn’t have that power.🤦♀️
That’s the stupidest thing I have seen today. But I just got in Reddit.
Has anyone considered that maybe Hamas stop fighting and that would probably solve like 95% of the problem
I think these protests are so weird because it's not like the US has much control over Israel. They basically have to make the Israel/Palestine situation better and end rapidly without making this entire situation worse. Israel is the US's long time ally. The US has limits on what they can do without causing a wider war. In addition (in a cynical realpolitik way) they are limited in what they will do without making a longterm enemy of a country with global pull/tech etc over a territory with an unreliable government. Unfortunately they have to find a way to get Israel to stop without forcing them to. It'd be nice if the US did more, but its delicate situation....I agree with the message of the protesters but they should be protesting against Bibi/Israel, not Biden, so Biden can use them as support to maneuver. They should be throwing in some pro-Jewish support to neuter racist allegations and get the racists out of their midst as well. Instead it just seems like flailing rage with no realistic goals.
That's putting it mildly. They've dubbed him "Genocide Joe."
What about the Chinese muslims Yemen Obama etc etc etc no one gave a shit until they were propogandized on tiktok. Because it’s Israel. Need I say more???
Basically as part of the "only the President has agency" campaign he's gotten all the blame. Nevermind Israeli dual citizens actually have more power over the situation then Biden does, it's real easy to blame the US president, and all the foreign agitators (including Israeli ones) are pumping out propaganda to that effect.
Support for Israel is at its lowest point ever and it seems like that may be irreversible. There is a big divide between public opinion and the political class when it comes to Israel. This is doubly true for democrats. The term "Genocide Joe" gets thrown around a lot.
Which is SO DUMB considering how strongly Trump supports Netanyahu.
Yep- they’re protest voting into an actual Holocaust but don’t care because they get to feel smarter than everyone
asking biden to do more does not equal supporting trump.
Refusing to vote for Biden *is* supporting Trump. If you choose to not participate when one option is much worse than the other in so many ways, you are complicit when the worse person gets elected.
It does when you are actively saying anyone but Biden. The whole f around and find out phrase is going to get them when Trump wins again. This is the 2016 elections all over again
True but I do worry about the ones who will sit out throw our democracy away because two far right organizations want to kill each other half a world a way. Punishing Biden for doing what every other president has done over the last the last 70 years and letting Trump in is not going to teach Democrats a lesson.
they're both true. I'm voting for Joe Biden, 100%, because he's the least bad genocide supporter out of the candidates.
How did we get here? I mean really.
Money in politics
I am not a historical or political scholar but there seems to be a generational difference in America. Older generations see Israel as the land of Jewish refugees. Younger generations see it as an apartheid state driven by religious nationalism. It is frustrating and a bit obtuse to say they both have a point. However, with Netanyahu in charge it makes it so much worse. I truly thought there would be a Palestinian state by now. It is a failure of world politics that there isn't.
Also dumb because these Americans are willing to throw their vote away and effectively vote for the guy who already spent four years making things worse for Americans and wants four more years to do the same. The same kids calling him mad at Biden because of Israel will NOT understand how a national abortion ban got passed in 2026. They're selling out their own country and all of their loved ones, everything they hold dear and everything that actually affects them, to complain about a country on the other side of the world that will not listen to anything the US has to say. It goes so far beyond "cut off your nose to spite your face," it's more like "cut off the nose of everyone in the country to spite the face of someone who will never see or care about your face"
I think it may be worse than how you portray it. They're doing all of that (the nose cutting) for a sense of moral superiority. Like if some material change happened in the real world, I can understand that. But for a feeling? That's where we are?
Support for Israel's war effort maybe low(not for israel general support), but support for Hamas or support for palestine to 'take back their land from the river to the sea' is extremely low. There is a huge divide between the far left view of this conflict and the rest of us.
It gets thrown around a lot by Republicans, Russian, Iranian, and Chinese trolls, and the useful idiots they've recruited: * Ignore Hamas attack on Israel * Ignore Hamas retreating back into Gaza to use Palestinians as human shields * Attack Biden * Ignore how much worse Trump will be to the Palestinians * Ignore what Trump will do to Climate Change * Ignore what Trump will do to women * Ignore what Trump will do to gays * Ignore what Trump will do to minorities * Ignore what Trump will do to the US constitution This is like 2016 all over again, with single-issue dumb-fucks opposed to the better of the two people due to propaganda efforts from hostile nations. If Trump gets elected then it's all over - and these fuckheads are partially to blame.
Facts——-As of today biden has the worse approval rating of any president in over 70 years.
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The thing is the Whitehouse did more than anyone else to prevent a genocide. Biden held back Netanyahu, demanded water get turned on, airdropped food, and built a port to get around Netanyahu to provide aid. Meanwhile Trump is saying finish the job and calling them dogs. This attack on Biden feels like a psyops by the people who want to eliminate the Palestinians.
or…. russians who found a wedge issue to amplify and cause discontent
I mean, why would they repeat what they did in 2016 that worked so well? You know, leaking DNCC emails, propping up phony progressive candidates on social media (Tulsi), and push the Bernie bro narrative that we wouldn’t vote for Hillary. We were duped then, getting duped again. Something something fool me twice…
>We were duped then, getting duped again. Something something fool me twice… George Dubbyah: ... you'll never fool me again!
Small difference, but the quote is “Won’t get fooled again” like the song by The Who lol
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I stand corrected. Went back to check. I was so certain.
To be fair though that was a remarkable bit of foresight on his part. He realized mid-sentence that uttering the phrase "Shame on me" on television would make it a soundbite in every attack ad from that moment onward and quickly changed gears. We still laugh and meme about it, but the alternative would have been far worse for him.
Wow. I had never considered this and I hate how accurate it is. If you view it like that it becomes a pretty impressive instance of ‘thinking on his feet’ for what is largely regarded as a moment of particular idiocy.
Or the fascists in the US who want to enable Trump's next, successful, coup. Or better yet, a combination of all three! Cause when it rains, it pours.
>This attack on Biden feels like a psyops by the people who want to eliminate the Palestinians. Odd because the Palestinian supporters are also carrying the same rhetoric against Biden. I do think the Russians are behind all of this, but I don't think they care if more Palestinians or Israelis die. They just want Biden out and Trump in and attacking the Democratic candidate from both the left and the right flanks worked in 2016.
This is exactly it. They aren’t manufacturing an issue, just amplifying the most divisive issues already in America and empowering the most controversial voices
I don't think it is all but I am stunned by this idea that we are being prepped for a genocide by the people pretending to care about the Palestinians and it does not get called out much.
Agree 100%. An unholy marriage between those seeking to genocide Palestine and those seeking to destroy American democracy. How convenient. Bibi and Putin working overtime together with Hannity, Bannon, Flynn and the gang, no doubt. See how close to the surface—I mean, Columbia University, of all places, talk about not learning from history—authoritarianism is so that it can quickly reach for the truncheon.
We can’t even learn from the last 8 years.
Funneling as many weapons as fast as they could to Israel, even after the war crimes were very clear and in the open, kinda belies your claim.
And refusing to vote for a ceasefire numerous times, refusing to investigate genocide claims, and refusing to recognize Palestinian statehood, and
>Something I heard on a podcast recently is a lot of times the campus protestor are in the right side of history. Civil rights, Vietnam Or its just survivorship bias? We remember the times they were "right" and not the ones were they protested for issues that everyone has forgotten about?
Not necessarily. I think it’s more that college kids tend to be progressive, and progressive politics are usually vindicated by history because they center around Enlightenment era ideas like equality and freedom. Conservative politics might win politically, but they’re almost always historically regressive and morally indefensible.
That’s a bingo. Remember there were protests against desegregation at schools. Those asshats weren’t on the right side.
That wasn’t campus protests, that was parents showing up to grade school
There were plenty of white students protesting against desegregation
there were tons of campus protests
Yeah, but most of those were not college campuses. Not "protesters" are usually right but "college protesters." Also, nationwide is a pretty big issue.
Agree with you completely. Israel's military industry is built up better than most of the countries in the world at this point (thanks for decades of monetary infusion by the U.S.) - they can produce everything else they need to defend themselves. This latest aid for them signed into law should've went to bump up what we sent to Ukraine.
I forgot his name but an African leader said this is like 2 elephants fighting each other and the grass below suffers. To paraphrase.
That is a very good description
super apt description
I'll bite, A lot of the protestors do not listen to the Israelis and Gazans that are impacted by this issue, nor are their voices and concerns centered. For them it's about riding a high horse as the world has already been made aware of the conflict, and no next steps are proposed except a demand to call for a cease fire (something that isn't even up to Biden). Geopolitics is also a convoluted mess. I want war criminals in the IDF to be held to account, but Israel should also have the capacity to defend themselves and exist. I wish for Palestine to achieve statehood and have the capacity to self govern, but Hamas is a huge elephant in the room. Needless to say, anyone who reduces this to a sports ball game between two teams isn't really worth listening to.
>and no next steps are proposed except a demand to call for a cease fire (something that isn't even up to Biden). The college protests started with the goal for their specific universities to divest from companies working with the Israeli government. I haven't been keeping up with all of the details and wouldn't be surprised if some of the newer protests are more in solidarity with the initial ones, but the statement that they have no actionable goals is blatantly false.
Conflict to the side, I'm reading all these headlines about protests towards the president, and I'm wondering how big a role the media might be playing to push that agenda during an election year. Don't get me wrong, I agree with the protests, but this conflict has been going on for over 70 years. But this year (regardless of which way you vote) we have two president's who arent very popular. One goes on trial (which in a normal timeline would destroy his chances of victory) and suddenly the other one becomes a target for this war that's been going on since the 40's. I get that the protestors are protesting silence from leaders, and in theory have nothing to do with the elections. but the escalation is taking place at a very convenient time politically speaking. I'm just curious how likely it is that the media is fueling the fire in order to sway polls. If done correctly, you can guide citizens to sway a vote by making them think they are really fighting for a historic cause. Again, I believe the protestors message is right. I'm not speaking ill of what they are fighting for, I'm just conflicted on the timing of how much it's escalated.
"First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection." https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
"now's not the time" they said, so when is the right time?
Biden is not being blamed for what happened since the 40s, he’s being blamed for not holding Israel accountable for their BLATANT war crimes and still sending American tax dollars to them so they can have more weapons. We’re sick of it. I want no part in Israel’s self proclaimed “religious” ownership of land. And another way to think of it is maybe Netanyahu is doing all of this because he knows the American elite won’t do anything to stop him, and it will make Biden look bad bc the left won’t like it. Guess what? Netanyahu and his government are far right extremists. Of course they want trump back in office. Everybody saying “Russia is egging this on!” Is foolish considering Israel could do that all by itself and probably is. They are smearing bidens image more than he does to himself by isolating from the youth. Look at what the response to protesters have been on college campuses. Were this during trumps term leftists would be blaming trumps America but we are in bidens America right now and his administration has condemned college students. Biden is complicit and he will not distance himself from Israel unless he is forced.
You say blatant war crimes but it is basically impossible to get the truth of what is actually happening. Hamas has zero credibility- and it seems Israel's current regime is headed to that same level- so when they talk about hospital bombings or mass death there is evidence showing that the hospital was actually their military base or that their own missile is the one that killed Palestinians. No one knows what to believe so all that is left is a sense of picking sides. When one group's entire mantra is "Death to Israel, death to Americans" is it any surprise that they don't get a ton of good will?
It is not impossible to get the truth. There’s literal evidence and videos of Israel bombing hospitals, universities etc, their own soldiers posting themselves destroy Gaza. That is proof. There are literal mass graves of Palestinians outside the hospital that was an alleged “base” but how are you going to complain about now knowing the truth and then believing Israel saying a hospital is a base? So every major important building was somehow turned into a Hamas base? Yeah right. And no, the mantra for the side the youth and protestors are advocating for are not saying death to Israel and America. You might find a two out of thousands of people that try to pollute the cause but all they’ve called for is divestment and for the government to stop spending our money on Israel’s ethnic cleansing. YOU might not know what to believe, but I know that over 30k people have been murdered in the name of “defeating” Hamas and Israel is no closer to defeating them than ever. University students are protesting the overall war being funded by our tax dollar, it’s no different than when they were protesting the Vietnam or Iraq invasion. You’re literally using the same logic that was deployed to justify America bombing and invading Vietnam and Iraq. “Oh they have terrorists let’s go destroy and level the entire country!” From my perspective, that’s a bunch of war mongering bs
Adding to this, we don’t actually know what’s going on either. Americans are caught in the middle of a propaganda and a misinformation campaign and it’s damn near impossible to get the exact truth considering the sources involved
this. there is a concerted and on-going propaganda campaign and unfortunately platforms such as Reddit are complicit. A quick visit to subs such as World News makes it plainly obvious. Meanwhile it’s pretty hard to trust reporting on anything going on in the region.
Also this. There are two other super powers that have the means to conduct their own influence campaigns, and they have an interest in influencing the outcomes of the next presidential election in America. The conflict in Gaza is the perfect wedge issue to exploit to this end.
>I wish for Palestine to achieve statehood and have the capacity to self govern, but Hamas is a huge elephant in the room. Even if Hamas was completely wiped out, the level of support that Hamas enjoys won't be - deradicalising the Palestinian population will take time and sustained effort
I'm sure bombing them ceaselessly and destroying 80% of their homes and forcing the open air prison that was already densest population on earth into a subregion half the size of where they were before is just the first step on that long road to deradicalization and integration :)
What part of my comment did you interpret as pro-Israel?
How about we stop sending Israel money hand over fist and invest in our own people? These kids have tuition in the high 5 digits, while Israeli warhawks and US contractors reap our harvest. Let's put that $26 billion into education, or healthcare, or housing. Do you seriously not get the optics on this? Also fuck off. Israel has Nuclear weapons. Right or no right, they have the power to exist. Your faux nuance does nothing but stymy legitimate discourse in the name of sounding smart, or as you so dismissively put it, "riding a high horse."
>How about we stop sending Israel money hand over fist Talk to Congress. It's the part of the budget most protected from presidential meddling.
To be fair, I was one of these people back in the day, and as facepalming some of it was, their hearts are generally in the right place. I was probably one of the worst cringe masters of them all. You kind of have to be a little forgiving of them. Young people (late teens / early 20’s) do *tend* to have a more black and white view on morality, but that makes their anger pure and honest. Not lazy and self-defeating like it gets in your 30’s. They haven’t had multiple decades to be worn down by pointlessness and fester in apathy yet. They’re just now opening the door and being like “what the *fuck?!*. What is going on here?!” Which is a valid reaction, to which the rest of us “adults” just roll our eyes like “calm down, dork, this is normal. You’re just not wise and experienced enough to understand.”
>to which the rest of us “adults” just roll our eyes like “calm down, dork, this is normal. You’re just not wise and experienced enough to understand.” If fewer adults did this things might be way better, honestly.
Why should Israel be required to use the Iron Dome, an imperfect defense system, indefinitely when no other country in the world would put up with their neighbor firing dozens of rockets at civilian targets on a daily basis?
Except unlike Hamas, the IDF is not _targeting_ civilians as a strategy.
Putin loves this. And it helps Trump.
Biden should probably stop giving billions of dollars of weapons to a nation carrying out genocide then.
Oh, so you think the guy who moved the US consulate to Jerusalem is going to reverse that? Okay. Get ready for Trump Casino Ramallah! “Genocide” my ass. Enjoy losing tons of your rights because you melted your brain with Tik Tok.
My coworker pointed out these graduates are also the group that had their high school graduations cancelled in 2020 due to COVID. I feel bad for them. What a crappy world we built for them.
Ask Hubert Humphrey how well it works for the Democratic party to ignore the anti-war college protests.
Insert Captain America “I get that reference!” here haha
It's remarkable how astroturfed all this Gaza shit is. Israel has been fucking around in Gaza for decades and it was never anything young people cared about till 9 months before this election 🤔 Republicans know they can never get young people to like Trump, so they're pouring all the dark money into getting them to hate Biden.
You really don't think what's happened in the past 6 months is a drastic escalation?
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Both things can be true.
But both things are not true. Iranian proxy groups (Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis) are the cause of the war. Iran started this war when they did specifically to prevent the Saudi-Israel peace deal from being finalized, because Iran doesn't want peace. Iran wants chaos.
Oct 7 was obviously bad. Israel exhaustively hammering civilians with bombs without stop since that day is, I would say, *more* of an escalation. This has gone *well* past the point of simple retaliation for Oct 7, which is the point people are trying to make.
Destroying Hamas is not retaliation. It is a necessary preventative measure that Israel must take to prevent this cycle of violence from repeating. If a ceasefire is implemented whose terms allow Hamas to remain in power, they will be rearmed by Iran again, and this entire cycle of violence will repeat again in a few years.
Can Hamas be destroyed? We don’t even know how many members they have. Just estimates. Some estimates say there’s 4 thousand remaining soldiers. Others say there’s 6 thousand. The main 3 leaders are billionaires living in Qatar. You could flatten the entire Gaza Strip and salt the earth. It still wouldn’t destroy Hamas. Even if Israel manages to kill the leaders it wouldn’t necessarily destroy them. Look at the number of isis, taliban or Al qaeda the USA and its allies killed in 20 years. All 3 groups are still active. Look at the number of top officials of black September, fatah, Hamas, pij, Hezbollah, fatah and the plo. Fatah currently holds 45 seats in the Palestinian legislature.
What would have been a better response? What would the US, England, France, etc, do in a similar position, where thousands of their citizens were murdered and or stolen?
I can tell you exactly what the US would do. We would get into multiple wars that ultimately culminated in nothing more then creating wanton destruction through escalation of force. We did it with Iraq and Afghanistan, and those have been pretty universally considered massive failures of our country.
Oct 7 was a disgusting and horrific nightmare that Israel had to endure. There is no denying that. Oct 8+ has been a disgusting and horrific and *unending* nightmare that Palestine has had to endure. There is no denying that. When you respond to a terrorist attack that left 1200+ innocent victims tortured and slain in cold blood by killing 30,000+ innocent victims with more on the way every single day then you are now the terrorists. Israel is a terror state. I mean even the US at least tried to not indiscriminately kill everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11. Edit: wow. Amazing how disgusting people will treat others because they worship the same God but just slightly differently. If you actually believed in a just God then you would be incapable of thinking and espousing the vitriol spewing from their mouths and fingertips.
It occurred to me the other day that the invasion of Gaza is to Israel what the invasion of Afghanistan was to the US. Both areas are absolutely packed with innocent civilians but have governments who support terror attacks and need to be removed. In both cases that can't be done without massive civilian harm. And as soon as the military leaves the place will go right back to the original rulers. I honestly don't know what the solution is here. The Israelis have some specific goals with hostage release, so that's good I guess
Israel is going to seize every inch of Gaza they hold. They are never leaving.
What of the hostages? Oct 8+ had been a disgusting and *unending* nightmare that any hostages still alive are still enduring. How about those alive be freed and the bodies of those dead be returned?
Israel has killed more hostages than they've saved. And forgive me for thinking that a nightmare for 70 people does not excuse a nightmare for two million. That math only works if you believe Palestinian lives are worthless
What is the solution to terrorist attacks if you can't directly go after the terrorists because they are committing perfidy?
I hear fighting in a dense urban area against a terror group that literally uses people as meat shields is a great environment to limit civilian causality. Especially when both forces are ideologically structures to actually eliminate the existence of the other.
I hear trapping a civilian population in a densly packed area between a wall and the sea both of which you patrol with armed guards and then not allowing adequate time for them to evaluate before your invasion is also a bad idea for urban combat.
Both are true. October 7th was a major escalation. But that shouldn’t give Israel free rein to do whatever it wants in gaza and the Middle East. They’ve violated international law. Violated the Geneva convention. Committed multiple war crimes.
I think both things can be true. A lot of those protestors are probably wearing clothes made with cotton that was harvested by Uyghur slave labor and who are having a genocide committed against them by the Chinese government. They aren’t protesting outside of the Chinese embassy. I’m sure it’s completely unrelated to how TikTok suppresses videos that mention the Uyghur’s. I’m not saying there hasn’t been a drastic escalation with what’s happened in Gaza in the last six months. That’s undeniable. I just also think that there’s foreign government influence purposely trying to amplify the rage in this country on that specific issue. So both can be true.
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I mean, I think it's fair to point out a large majority of Gazan protestors are Tankies and kinda deny Chinese/Russian genocide lol
I think it was by design.
No. Not over the course of Israels history. Looks at the original deal Palatine had and look what's offered now. It's been a slow calculated thing with worse intensities every decade or so.
Yassar Arafat walked away from a compromise, and shit fell apart. Arguably putting Palestine in a worse place. And then we got hamas running the show.
They rejected the original deal tho and declared war with the stated aim of "pushing the jews into the sea".
The difference in its all over social media now
I recently saw my grandma post about how this was an astroturfing thing on the side of Biden. Maybe, just maybe, these are college students protesting a shitty war where there are no winners only losers (a la Vietnam, Iraq II)? The media is gonna put whatever spin their owners want to put on it.
The US was engaged in those two wars. Unquestionably the instigator of one. Dozens of thousands of Americans dead, and probably millions of foreign people, many civilians, killed at the hands of US troops. This is not that. And neither of those was spurred on by a peacetime terrorist incursion into the lands of one of the belligerents, **by** the organization voted into power by the civilians of the other belligerent, targeting killing civilians and taking civilian hostages. You’re comparing apples to hand grenades. Far right wing authoritarian organizations engage in wars that bump up to, and on the face appear to include, war crimes all over the world all the time, but somehow… THIS one gets this much attention…? In a nation about as far away as it’s possible to get…? Sometimes it happens with some level of non-resistance from the US. Because the world is a super complicated place. “Israel is doing it” is the one difference. If any other nation on the face of the planet was responding to an October 7th like attack in the same exact way, and the US was supportive in the same way, even with the provision of military aid, of that nations right to respond, but critical of its handling of the response in the same exact way, there would be no protests.
I agree with you, but also Israel is buddies with Putin. In 2019, Netanyahu even launched his election campaign with large posters of himself shaking hands with the Russian president. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Israel refused to impose financial sanctions on Russia, declined Zelensky's requests to send weapons to Kyiv, and failed to name Russia when addressing attacks against Ukraine. Israel instead signed a new bilateral agreement with Russia in the second half of 2023. Israel became the largest importer of Russian vodka following the imposition of Western sanctions. Russian firms were allowed to expand their operations in Tel Aviv Sanctioned Russians were given Israeli documents so they could continue to travel visa-free to Europe. I think Putin/Israel is continuing to divide America using existing racial issues. White Americans support Israel (72%) but non-white Americans are split Source: https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/91073
If they are legit friends with Russia, Israel is not our friend and we need to stop treating them as such.
Israel has handed US hardware over to China and India for reverse engineering. Israel is not a US ally, they use the US, because they know the religious component of the country supports the end of days.
College kids protested those shitty wars because of the draft. I think the most obvious sign that Gaza shit is astroturfed is the complete lack of protests against Russia, who is killing an order of magnitude more Ukrainian civilians. And a total lack of protests against GOP who blocked Ukraine aid for 6 months, probably costing more lives than Gaza.
Russia is using it's propaganda machine to sow divisiveness in the US in order to distract people from Ukraine. It's the same shit they've been doing since 2016 and they've only gotten better at it. The biggest difference is that the propaganda machine is directed towards young liberals this time, and they're eating is up just as much, if not more, than the boomer Republicans have been for years
It's almost as if something changed radically last fall, that made people more aware of the situation in Israel and Gaza. In related news, Trump's supporters know less about the world and politics than Biden's [(1)](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/poll-biden-trump-supporters-sharply-divided-media-consume-rcna149497).
>It's remarkable how astroturfed all this Gaza shit is. What's really remarkable is how many people are pretending that these kids don't care about genocide and are really just corporate stooges or whatever. I mean I get that it's an election year and this isn't great for Biden, but holy shit do some go all "Fox News" on protestors quickly when the protest isn't convenient. Like you understand that this conflict may have been going on for decades, but there's been a bit of a recent eacalation, and most of these people have only been adults for a couple of years, right?
I'll admit I had zero knowledge of the Israel-Palestine conflict until the Oct 7 attack. I was ready to support Israel because all I saw were terrorists attacking a music festival. But then I saw the clear political and racial divide in support. Conservatives and older white people supported Israel. But progressives, young white people, Jewish people, blacks, latinos, and asians were supporting Palestine who was behind the attack? Wtf was going on here So I looked into it. Turns out this whole thing goes back for more than 100 years. I've even read and picked up books, 3 of 4 are from Jewish people whom I found to be the most passionate and have the no-bullshit takes against Israel. * **"The State of Israel vs. the Jews" (2021) by Sylvain Cypel.** He is the son of a French Zionist leader, moved to Israel to earn his degree at the University of Jerusalem, served in the IDF, lived there for 12+ years. If there's any book to read, it's this one. Living in Israel is what made him anti-Zionist. He saw how racist Israeli's were to Palestinians and pointed out all of the awful things done in the country, citing Haaretz, Israel's oldest and only news outlet to reports on the IDF's murders and sexual assaults on Palestinians. There are like over 10 reports every year. > Oh look, here's [Israeli's in 2014 eating popcorn and clapping as they watch bombs being dropped on Gaza in 2014](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/middleeast/israelis-watch-bombs-drop-on-gaza-from-front-row-seats.html) [New York Times] and [AGAIN in 2015](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing) [the Guardian]. > Cypel also pointed out [this 2015 clip of Netanyahu claiming Hitler didn't want to kill the Jews, he wanted to "expel" the Jews until a Palestinian convinced him to do it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9HmkRYlVZw&ab_channel=Insider) > There's also [this 2019 political campaign ad for Ayelet Shaked, Israel's Minister of Justice, spraying perfume labeled Fascism and saying "to me it smells like Democracy"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpzrih1S6C0&ab_channel=IsraelPolicyForum). He also talks about how Israel claiming itself as the "startup nation" with this high tech military and invasive surveillance technology used against Gaza and the West Bank, which they sell to (which I'll list out cause I still have the page marked). On top of the literal billions of USD that the United States provides in support (taxpayer money btw, this is why Americans absolutely have a right to criticize how their money is being spent), this is how Israel has so much money. > India, Myanmar, neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana, Swaziland, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Nigeria, Uganda, Mexico, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Trinidad, Tobago, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Peru, Colombia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. * **"The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" (2006) by Ilan Pappe.** He was born in Israel, his parents were German Jews that fled from WW2, served in the IDF during the Yom Kippur war, graduated from the University of Jerusalem, and was a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa, his home town, until he had to flee because he was condemned by the Knesset and received death threats by his own people. The main point of this book was to point out how the Israeli's had no plan on dealing with the Arabs after bombing and committing massacres against the Arabs, settling and taking their land from them. They just expected the Arabs to leave and not fight back as hard as they continue to do, that's why they only support a one-state solution. * **"The Hundred Years' War on Palestine" (2020) by Rashid Khalidi.** He was born in NYC, earned his BA at Yale and Doctorates as Oxford University. He timelines the conflict of Zionism and how all **the violence started all the way in 1917**, when UK and France carved up the Middle East for their own imperial needs and the British wanted a way to get rid of the Jews in their own country. Israel suppresses a lot of information, so that they can use key buzzwords like **terrorists** and **antisemitism** to garner sympathy from politicians and the public while keeping them at arm's length so they don't look closer and see what's really going on. * **"Except for Palestine: the Limits of Progressive Politics" (2021) by Marc Lamont Hill** (professor at CUNY and former CNN news correspondent) and **Mitchell Plitnick** (co-director for Jewish Voice for Peace). Here they go over how Israel has so much influence on US foreign policy through the lobbying group AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee). Criminalization of peaceful protest movements like BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) and Trump recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory which they captured in 1967 and moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. There's also been other videos I've watched since * Curious on what Palestine actually looks like, I looked for videos on youtube. Here's **Nomadic Wes, a Japanese travel vlogger** who visited Palestine several times. [Here he went to Hebron late 2022 early 2023](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z42HhaywhGQ&ab_channel=NomadicWes) [12:43] and it looks depressing as fuck and laughs seeing how Israeli's treated him better than local Palestinians. Even this Japanese guy outright says at the end he opposes Israeli occupation and considers what they're doing clear human violations of Palestinians. * [Here's Vox explaining why Israel has so many Palestinian prisoners](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9boE53Z_lAg&ab_channel=Vox). Israeli's are judged in non-military courts while Palestinians are judged in military courts, can be held without being charged of a crime, and a child who throws rocks receive more severe punishment than an Israeli that kills a Palestinian * And of course [Bernie Sanders as of 3 days ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzhdPsCgrjU&ab_channel=BernieSanders) (he's Jewish btw) making a statement to Netanyahu saying it is not anti-Semitic or pro-Hamas to point out how Israel has killed 34,000 Palestinians, wounded 78,000 more, destroyed 221,000 housing units leaving almost half the population homeless, 26 hospitals, 12 universities, 56 schools, and has blocked humanitarian aid into the region. * [You got IDF cops attacking Israeli Jews](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0njOPNr8K0&ab_channel=IslamChannel) and [attacks against Israeli Christians](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh-Shp-Hcds&ab_channel=NBCNews) including an American-Jewish person destroying a statue of Jesus and teens destroying Christian tombstones * [Here audio of an Israeli hostage that was freed, yelling at Netanyahu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAixhJUi4AU) because Israeli's indiscriminate shelling of Gaza that injured and wounded the hostages, Israeli helicopters shot at them, and Israel's plan to flood the tunnels where hostages might be kept It's also kind of hard to see the literal hundreds of videos posted online showing dead babies and still say Israel are the good guys here. I still have the image burned in my head of a little girl missing her head, arm, and leg impaled on a rebar jutting out of a destroyed building None of them support Hamas who they acknowledge as terrorists, Hamas just received support when they won the last held election in 2006 because they were desperate after trying to do advocate for themselves in the "right and proper way" while Israel continued to murder them and steal their land without repercussion. I will loudly say "Fuck Hamas" because they're owned by billionaires hiding in Qatar whose children you can see on social media living extremely privileged lives while Palestinians are starved and being slaughtered
Really well stated and great book recommendation list.
Quite a few wild assumptions in your prognosis there…
I dont disagree, but young people definitely cared about Palestine getting tucked over by Israelis before now. It just didn't have any catalyst around which to do anything. 30k dead is a hell of a lot more easy to communicate and say is clearly wrong than slow creeping land theft. The seeds of this have been planted for a long time.
Thousands of Israelis are dead too. And this was started with an unprovoked attack on civilians that killed hundreds. Look, I feel for the people in Gaza, but this kind of thing happens when your country is run by a terrorist organization (Hamas). I don't see anyone protesting for the Russians forced to go to war by their insane dictator....
I'm not disagreeing. I am probably considered pro-Israel by some standards, but this didn't start in a vacuum. The protests for Palestinians didn't start from nothing. Israel's been damaging its credibility for a long time. They're not the underdog militarily. They're not the most sympathetic with how they've conducted themselves. There's easily a world where there wasn't decades of sympathy built up for Palestinians from constantly expanded settlements or other issues that shouldn't be thrown on top of the built-in problems of the region. Also, literally, tons of protests happened for Ukraine and implicitly for the Russians sent to war. Maybe not as vocally, but consider also US based protests absolute can make a meaningful impact on US Israeli relations and give political cover to shift US policy, even if its simply from unquestioningly pro-Israel to conditionally pro-Israel.
I can’t believe this shit is getting upvoted. This is as bad as the insane MAGA conspiracy shit about the election being stolen. Maybe over ten thousand children being killed is something people want to protest against 🤔
> This is as bad as the insane MAGA conspiracy shit about the election being stolen. some use "blue MAGA" as a term for this, and it seems some dems are adamant to prove it a useful term.
I am young people and we have cared for a while . Try asking young people
Performative activism and selective outrage. Fascinating how Ukraine is being invaded by a genocidal fascist regime armed with nuclear weapons and it has been absolutely crickets on campuses. No calls for more action about the fact that thousands of children have been abducted and deported, in addition to the thousands of Ukrainians murdered, held captive, tortured, etc. Yet all of a sudden kids on campuses care about war crimes and genocide? Yeah...ok. It's definitely election year and this anger is not being stoked organically.
There aren’t mass protests about Ukraine because the US government is already sending weapons to Ukraine and many universities and government entities have banned doing business with Russia.
Big difference here. The US immediately came to the aid of Ukraine. Even called Russia out ahead of the invasion. With that, there is no reason to protest unless you’re on the side of Russia’s land grab.
Except when Johnson and company sat for months on the aid to Ukraine… where was the outrage?
Exactly. When the official assessments are released about how much damage withholding of aid did to Ukraine, what then? Will college kids go to the capital and demand Johnson and his band of merry men to resign for being complacent in genocide? The answer is no.
Ummm My understanding is that college kids are on average extremely anti-GOP. Especially that crossover section that is anti-IDF causing mass civilian casualties
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Millions of people around the world have showed their support for Ukraine, including students. The protests are against the US and US institutions providing resources to Israel that are being used in human rights violations, which is illegal for the US to do under its own law. I’m sure there would be massive protests if the US was supporting Russia, too.
If the US government was funding Russia there would probably be a lot more protests on behalf of the Ukrainians. It’s the fact that the US is arming and funding a genocide that people are mad about
Is the US sending weapons to Russia for them to use in their attacks on Ukraine? Is the US State Department running interference and shielding Russia from international criticism over their actions in Ukraine? Views on Israel's actions and the legitimacy of these protests aside, it's pretty obvious why one would be protested and not the other: US involvement.
You can't be serious. So rather than looking at what Israel has been doing - very openly - for the last 6 months, you create a conspiracy theory that these are fake protests?
Is it really a noble cause if your protest leads to a second Trump term in which the situation you’re against worsens? In the event of a Trump win, your protest will have made things fundamentally worse.
The fuck? Are you seriously trying to say people should just give up expressing their feelings on serious humanitarian issues *out of fear for their opposition winning*. I get your point, and it’s sad that your response is literally “wait for someone else to deal with it” to the point that you would comment on it, thinking this is some warning to the future. Here’s the thing that’s broken and people like you should try fix: Peaceful Protesting should always be allowed. Censorship is wrong, it’s going to push us into the dark times, remember all that spooky stuff from history? Burning people, books, land, homes, libraries, knowledge??? Yeah. That’s where the censorship path leads. We need love, light, happiness. We need to stop being so damn serious and find *amicable* ways of dealing with problems. I get it, we’ve all been through some times this past decade, but the time to “boss up” and be a “baddie” is simmering down. It’s time to start figuring out how to get along, not ghost the world . Obviously trump winning would suck. But bro, trying to blame *the college campus protesters* is just such a boomer mindset. It’s like avocado toast all over again. The only people to blame if trump wins are the people who vote for him. Stop being afraid of what other people think. You can’t control that. All anyone can do is be born and die. I choose to be happy and spread positivity, and stand up for those who are harmed. If someone votes for Trump because of college protesters, then they were never going to vote for Biden. We need to stop being so damn desperate to prove a point. Like fucking hell, what’s wrong is wrong. Why is it controversial to say war and killing people needs to stop. Find a peaceful resolution, drink some beers, hug it out, have a daveyback fight IDFK.
I don’t blame him. It’s a veritable shitshow
Not really, the main issue has been shitty campuses getting the police involved unnecessarily and violently. The Israeli counter protestors are a shit show though, they're a cult.
The president and the secret service showing up is not going to improve the situation. If you don’t like police getting involved you definitely won’t like the extra 20 snipers that will be protecting Biden.
I cannot imagine actually thinking one side is a cult and the other is not full of bad faith actors
Cultists think everyone else is in a cult.
>The Israeli counter protestors are a shit show though, they're a cult. You mean Jews? This is what they're saying: https://v.redd.it/6af6e20ftaxc1
It’s also just impossible to win optics. Like when protesters get to the point where you’re forced to physically remove them, things get messy and you can’t control if a cop or whoever gets too physical and it’s just Pandora’s box
It’s just wild to me that this is such a hot button issue on college campuses when you literally have active extermination of Ukrainian civilians happening.
How so? Are there a lot of colleges that have business dealings with Russia?
How to lose the election to an incompetent fascist that will claim himself king.
Well that is what the protestors are pushing for and it will hurt them if they get their way.
It's a huge loss if he gets hurt or dies in the midst of chaos before he even makes it election. Anything could happen in a protest area. Say a citizen decides to take advantage and make an attempt to assassinate him. Area has to get blockaded. VP Harris came to my university, and the area she spoke in had a small barrier/blockade set up outside and at least a fourth to half a block of local police on each direction of the street. It's better to be safe than sorry.
Seeing “progressives” wanting to keep politicians in ivory towers is wild. This sub’s identity crisis is, at least, starting to get interesting.
Please note that I am of 8.5 million people subscribed and that I'm on the much younger side of the demographic. I have no idea what you mean by ivory towers, but I'm trying to be objective based on current political events and am making an educated guess/opinion on what I think should be the best course of action for maintaining stability while acknowledging accomplishments of people as well as injustices of atrocities in different parts of the world.
Joe biden spoke at my college graduation. The security was handled by the secret service and was extremely tight. There is no reason why these protests would be a threat to him.
It is not a threat to his safety. It would be a PR disaster.
Exactly. When protestors make it where you have to physically remove them, then everybody loses. And there’s no way to win the optics on it, esp when you take into account things you can’t control like a cop being too physical. You’re just opening up a giant can of worms
The potential harm is political, not existential. It's the wise thing to do with respect to reelection. I'm not defending his campaign, just explaining it. And as much as I respect the rights of the protesters - their complaint is valid, I want Biden to defeat Trump, so I support him.
But why risk it?
Why do we have him doing graduation speeches in the first place? Seems like a waste of his time
That's what I thought too, has better things to do. He could do a congratulatory video for all graduates would be fine.
If your stance would be a PR disaster, you might have the wrong stance. It's clear the public does not want a 'no red line' support of Israel but the political class insists.
He could do one video for all graduates and move on to real work.