cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20133423
[interview with Dr. Hassan Abdel Salam, from Abandon Harris movement]
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 04 Sep 2024
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20133423
[interview with Dr. Hassan Abdel Salam, from Abandon Harris movement]
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 04 Sep 2024
It is being ignorable so long as you wield no leverage. If you believe in electoralism, your current leverage is your vote. If you telegraph your vote for Harris then you are not really opposing a genocide so much as declaring that you will be troubled while you bear witness to it. You announce your pain and those of the systematically murdered civilians along with your inflinching support to continue both.
They don’t even have to call your bluff because you aren’t threatening anything. What ceasefire talk was there at the “joyous” DNC that had an Israeli speaj and the candidate pledge unconditional support?
Have you noticed that the Biden administration has attempted to make “ceasefire” to mean a temporary pause and hostage exchange? The call for a ceasefire is already a weak line and easy to coopt and ignore, in part because it is a vague “pro-peace” rather than pro-justice line that does not require any actual engagement or action or call to learn on the part of its supporters. See how cheap it has been to keep your support? They’ve given you nothing.
Here is a new line: end weapons and funding to Israel, stop the genocide now. Seems pretty modest to me.
Yes this was part of the kayfabe I mentioned that included redefining the meaning of ceasefire. That was Harris meeting with the openly genocidal Gantz that will only ever want escalated destruction of Palestinians while introducing what would become a redefining and cooption of ceasefire.
Previous ceasefires with Isrsel have been predicated on arms embargoes. How do you square that with Harris’ announcement of unconditional support?
If you continue reading you will discover that your politicians lie and mislead. This is Harris trying to keep your support while continuing Biden’s policies. It is literally the same line as Biden’s and their only policy proposal is the aforementioned temporary pause and exchange.
Israel just assassinated the person they were supposed to be negotiating an alleged ceasefire with. What have Biden, Harris, et al had to say about this blatant undermining of their supposed flagship peace plan?
Israel has just begun a similar campaign against the West Bank. They killed an American activist that had been organizing in the US against complicity with Israeli perpetrated genocide. What is the response to the exact opposite thing happening? The most powerful people in the party, with the highest office, and literal control over the military, is not throwing its weight around to get Israel to stop. It is doing the opposite: arms, aid, and using its military to go after Houthis - who act in solidarity with Gaza - instead. The facts speak for themselves.
This is why the Uncommitted Movement switched to an arms embarho demand. Because this weaseling appropriation convinced liberals desperate to have any excuse to vote for their gemocider.
Trump has no voter contingent that he could maybe lose if he didn’t feign sympathy for Palestinians. He doesn’t need to do the “Lucy holding a football” thing on this particular issue.
The current Biden-Harris administration is genociding Gaza via its complete support for the Israeli settler colonial project, including a systematic civilian bombing campaign against housing, hospitals, food distribution, schools, and shelters. It has cut off electricity and water. If you vote for this, if you advocate for voting for this, you are complicit in genocide.
I would be happy to explain how lesset-evil cheerleading voting is self-defeating illogic, but I would hope that having blood on your hands would be enough.
I agree that as long as Bibi is in charge we have no actual leverage to get things done because he doesn’t give two shits what anyone in the US says or does, but that’s not the same thing as saying Harris is “pro genocide”, she’s not.
Blaming Netanyahu is a copout that distracts from two salient facts:
The US hasn’t actually done anything against Israel, let alone withheld from actively supporting its genocide. It makes no sense to sat, “oh well I guess we could never make things happen due to Netanyahu”. Nothing has been tried! But it does place the focus for responsibility on a foreign leader over whom you have no expectation of influence, whereas every person in the US can fight against genocide supported by the Biden-Harris admin.
Israelis have, on average, incredibly dehumanizing attitudes towards Palestinians. Netanyahu isn’t even that far right in Israel. They broke that rapist out of jail and are parading him around on TV. This is typical of ethnic supremacist settler colonisrs, it has happened several times over the last 200 years, we know the pattern. The protests against Netsnyahu, and his lower approval ratings, are tied to sentiments about not being harsh enough on Gaza and not retrieving the hostages, not the genocide of Palestinians, who they call terrorists. Who they believe should not be shown on television in a sympathetic light, that it should be censored. All of this is to say that the genocide in Gaza is very popular in Israel. What is unpopular are the impacts to the settlers. Economic problems, exodus from the north, and an inability to return the hostages.
The Biden-Harris administration is supporting a genocide. That genocide depends on the consent and military support of the most powerful country on the planet. Both Biden and Harris are providing thus unconditionsl support. They are sending the weapons. They are sending the money. They are building the little pier that was used to land and extract military personnel. They are fighting the ICJ on Israel’s behalf. They are pressuring every country they can on Israel’s behslf. They are trying to undermine the Houthis’ blockade done in solidarity with Gaza. Faced with a domestic anti-genocide movement, they are refusing to pressure college campuses to not sic cops (et al) on protesters and feed into the bad faith rhetoric that to oppose Israel’s genocide is to be antisemitic. When corronating their new candidate, part of this genocidal administration, they brought on an Israeli speaker, pledged unconditional material support to Israel, and shut out a potential Palestinian soeaker.
Harris is not just pro-genocide, she has assisted this one and has pledged to materially support its continuation.
Bibi and the Likud property are literally the problem. They take US support intended for the legit support of the Iron Dome and re-direct it into war crimes.
Please see: everything I just said that contradicts overemphasizing “the problem” just being Netanyahu being obstinate. I wrote out two main points with many specifics to support and explain my meaning.
And the US knowingly funds the genocide in Gaza. It isn’t an oopsie. They have only increased funding since Oct 7.
They are not funding the genocide. They are funding the legitimate defense of Israel.
The Israeli leaders are mis-directing that funding into the genocide.
Oh they are most definitely funding the genocide. Here us one simple example: Boeing is the exclusive manufacturer of JDAMs, a system that retrofits bombs to make them missiles. The US provides direct funding to Israel for them to “buy” these systems. JDAMs are the most common bombs used in this genocide to target civilian infrastructure. Hospitals, schools, refugee csmos, bakeries, mosques, churches.
Plenty of other forms of funding and material support, this is just a particularly visceral example.
100% wrong, these are offensive weapons with only one purpose and they are provided with no strings attached. Funding and support has only increased and Israel has only escalated.
The purpose for which they are sold is “defend Israel”, the purpose Bibi puts them to use as is “genocide”, but that is not why we’re selling them.
An example I use quite a bit is humanitarian aid, a lot of aid we send out gets stolen or re-directed by corrupt governments. That doesn’t mean we’re going to stop sending aid.
“Defense” has a long history of euphemistic use and this is no exception. JDAMs have no defensive use. They are bombs. They have been and are used to bomb essential civilisn infrastructure in Gaza. The US and Israel still call it “defense”. It is just a rhetorical trick. Same as " Israel has a right to defend itself", which is a thought-terminating cliche that provides a smokescreen for highly aggressive military actions with little care for civilians, journalists, aid workers.
Everyone in power knows how this works and what it means. It isn’t an accident or even particularly unwanted. Israel has been invading and destroying Gaza for nearly a year. Nobody thinks a bunch of JDAMs are for defending Israel or are a case of misuse. They are being used exactly as intended.
Kamala: builds gas chamber "please don’t use this for genocide!
Hitler: uses it for genocide.
Kamala: builds another “I’m serious, please don’t use it for genocide, I will keep building them no matter what but please stop”
Hitler: uses it for genocide
Kamala: builds another “this genocide is getting old, look at all those other countries opposing you for it! Please stop, if not I’ll have to fight those other countries for you!”
Hitler: continues genocide
You: wow look how anti-genocide Kamala is! She keeps asking Hitler to stop doing genocide! While directly helping him do genocide and even vowing to defend him from others who would stop him! It’s the fact she asks him to stop that matters not the enabling!
That is not what Harris is doing.
It’s not?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Okay. So, I just had a frank and constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu. I told him that I will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
From when I was a young girl collecting funds to plant trees for Israel to my time in the United States Senate and now at the White House, I’ve had an unwavering commitment to the existence of the state of Israel, to its security, and to the people of Israel.
Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization. On October 7, Hamas triggered this war when it massacred 1,200 innocent people, including 44 Americans.
It is important for the American people to remember the war in Gaza is not a binary issue. However, too often the conversation is binary, when the reality is anything but.
So, I ask my fellow Americans to help encourage efforts to acknowledge the complexity, the nuance, and the history of the region.
July 25, after a meeting with Netanyahu…
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/07/25/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-following-meeting-with-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-of-israel/
And let me be clear. And let me be clear. I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on Oct. 7,…
And know this: I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists.
Aug 22, DNC Speech.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/23/us/politics/kamala-harris-speech-transcript.html
Harris also did not expose any daylight between herself and Biden on the Middle East when asked directly if she would be doing anything differently, including limiting arm sales to Israel.
“We have to get a deal done. This war must end, and we must get a deal that is about getting the hostages out,” she said.
Aug 29, interview with CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/29/politics/kamala-harris-tim-walz-cnntv/index.html
The issues tab on her website
https://kamalaharris.com/issues/
Saying Israel should be able to defend itself is not the same as allowing Israel to offensively commit genocide. Two different things.
Harris supports the former, not the latter. Bibi wants the latter, not the former.
…
So…
She’s doing exactly what I said above…
Giving/promising to give him weapons and support to use for “not genocide” while he continues to do the genocide using those weapons and support…
Edit: if you’ll care to notice…she doesn’t call it a genocide. She calls it a war. A war which she blames Hamas for starting…therefore she tries to paint the genocide as falling under a “war of defense” just like Netanyahu and Israel do and exactly what she is promising to allow/help Israel with…