Netanyahu is under pressure to keep his coalition government intact. Two far-right partners have threatened to bolt in protest at any deal they deem to spare Hamas. A centrist partner, ex-general Benny Gantz, wants the deal considered. Hamas has provisionally welcomed the Biden initiative.
I think it’s not too late. We have lots of time before the election. I think anyone who can make peace in the Middle East, even if it’s just walking things back to a previous stalemate, has a hell of a foreign policy win.
That being said, a reset to where things were before does little for the Palestinian people as regards the original cause of this violence, and I wonder whether they will be largely forgotten or if they will continue to be important to American politics the way Ukraine has.
I certainly hope you’re right. I just don’t know how many people abandoned Biden over the U.S. response to Israel so far will come back.
If the ceasefire sticks through the election it will overshadow his prior complicit funding for most of those people who wanted a long term solution.
I sincerely hope you’re right.
The electorate has short memories. Normally, I hate it. It’s why I predicted Biden wouldn’t do anything about marijuana until closer to the election (I was right!). But in this case, maybe that short memory will be a good thing lol. I think it’ll work if he can succeed and Israel doesn’t fuck it up (or Hamas, but it’s more likely to be Israel that is the problem since Hamas already agreed to a previous ceasefire that Israel rejected).
I am a very vocal critic of Biden for supporting the Palestinian genocide.
I have railed on him in thread after thread for enabling the slaughter of Palestinians.
I am one single person but I want to vote for Biden, this genocide is just a red line for me.
I can really only speak for the left but mark my words if Biden genuinely stops this genocide (or starts taking meaningful action to stop it) the vast majority of those voters will come back because this isn’t about rejecting Biden (have y’all even been paying attention to leftists organizing around voting “uncommitted” in the primaries as a thoughtful way to mitigate splitting the party?), this is about rejecting neoliberalism’s stranglehold over the democratic party and the absolutely horrific consequences that happen when we don’t do the work to reject the intellectually suffocating and ideologically lazy environment created by neoliberalism and centrism (that inevitably plays directly into the hands of fascists as history has shown over and over again).
Barely anybody on the left who has indicated they don’t want to vote for Biden because of his appalling lack of desire to stop the genocide of the Palestinians is going to react to Biden genuinely creating a ceasefire by not changing their position and supporting Biden over Trump. Leftists understand just as well as centrists that Trump will be worse.
What centrists can’t wrap their mind around is that if we don’t fight existentially for Palestinians now than Gaza will be considered a successful prototype by rightwing fascist western parties/governments all over the world and we will see this kind of violence become the new world order. We need to stamp this shit out now, and many of us on the left feel that the only effective leverage point is setting Biden’s ego for desiring to win the presidency as an old piece of shit against his loyalty to Israel (along with most of the Republican and Democratic parties).
Is Biden directly complicit in the mass murder of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians no matter if he stops the genocide today? Of course, and he will always deserve the jeering insult “Genocide Joe” for it as a tiny penance to pay. However like the rest of y’all I understand that all US presidents are mass murderers. George Bush directly caused 1 million Iraqi citizens to die…. for what? How fucked up is it the way Obama escalated highly illegal unilateral drone strikes completely hidden from the scrutiny of the US public?
I don’t need Biden to be a good person I agree with to vote for him, I need him to come back over what is a very very very reasonable red line.
Gaza isn’t the prototype. In my mind that would be Xinjiang, and the “reeducation” of the Uighur community. The next example would be Ukraine (Crimea first, then Luhansk and Donetsk, and finally the whole country in 2022). Gaza is third at best.
Ukraine is a war, it is modern imperialism, an army invades a country and an another army fights to repel the invasion.
Gaza is a genocide.
Apples and oranges though both are horrendous.
If you think the Palestinian Genocide in Gaza is a war you need to unplug your brain from cable news because it is decaying your capacity to understand reality, slap yourself in the face, touch some grass, topple your world view to pieces and begin over again from the standpoint that human life, all human life, is precious and that the many are never responsible for the actions of the one.
Tell that to the people of Bucha, of Lyman, of Maruipol.
Those are YOUR words not mine. Keep your strawman to yourself.
No mention of Xinjiang? Or was that just a war to you? Which army was defending the Uyghur people?
Ok, not sure what this has to do with them but sure. If they are curious I will point out that this is not in fact a war, not even close.
….and stop trying to sidetrack this conversation, other genocides and atrocities existing has no bearing on my outrage over a genocide the US is directly enabling right now.
How dare you use whataboutism for genocides as if bringing up one makes another less awful, what a repulsive and cynical way to see the world.
Tens of thousands of them are dead as victims of genocide. Actions that happened before October 8th 2023.
Check your righteous indignation and your ADDITIONAL strawman at the door please.
You’ve got yourself so whipped up into a frenzy about Gaza you’re blinding yourself to anything that isn’t that. The discussion you put yourself into was whether Gaza was the FIRST or not. The only person that suggested that genocide wasn’t happening FIRST was you when you said only Gaza was genocide.
EDIT: added the missing word FIRST to the second sentence
…what? When did I say that?
I respect your position, but there is a reason in airplanes you’re instructed to put your own mask on in case of an emergency before assisting others. I feel for the Palestinian people, but a fascist America is so much worse - both for me personally and the world at large and especially for my children.
An America lost to fascism is liable to eventually engulf the world in genocide and fire.
I don’t think you understand, this moment, this slaughter of Palestinians, it is the announcement of a new world order for the western world. A new era of western governments turning inwards and enacting massive amounts of violence towards their own people.
There is only one correct response to that, and it is to treat it as a red line. Failing to do so is catastrophic. Letting Biden win without having to deal with this is incredibly dangerous and is a classic liberal/centrist perspective of appeasing the forces of fascism until it is too late.
Quick question for you. What do you think tRump will do if he wins? You sound like a troll. You bring up Obama with drone strikes even though what was it, eight months in on tRumps presidency he already surpassed Obaman’s kills with drone strikes. Don’t have to answer that, we already know what you’re going to say, just answer this one, you a bot or troll?
Nowhere did I say I like Trump, Trump is a fascist, that isn’t hyperbole or shrill lefty talk,bit is just just brand at this point.
Biden needs to stop the Palestinian genocide so that Trump doesn’t win.
I don’t feel like this makes me a troll, maybe you disagree with me. Fine. My intentions are not disingenuous however, I want the least amount of harm to come to all humans and animals however best that may be. In my opinion, that means putting all our chips on the table now and making it clear that no matter what Trump does, Biden has no path to the presidency if he directly backs an ongoing genocide with US weapons against the majority will of the US public (by a sizable margin).
This genocide thing. What the fuck do you think tRump will do? Blaming Biden is honestly one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. It’s just a troll move to blame him. You think people will vote for tRump because of this??? BULLSHIT, tRump will be much worse, as he’s already said he would be. That’s troll shit. Do you blame gun manufacturers or gun sellers for gun murders? No, you blame the fucking people shooting the guns. At least Biden is trying to get them to call for a cease fire.
Which is stupid because Trump wants to nuke Gaza.