President Biden spoke to Benjamin Netanyahu this morning about Israel's attack on an aid convoy three days ago:
President Biden emphasized that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable. He made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers. He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.
You can certainly criticize Biden for talking tough but continuing to supply weapons to Israel without condition. Plenty of liberals are doing exactly that. Still, former president Donald Trump also spoke this morning about the war. Here's what he said:
You’ve got to get it over with, and you have to get back to normalcy. And I’m not sure that I’m loving the way they’re doing it, because you’ve got to have victory. You have to have a victory, and it’s taking a long time. And the other thing is I hate, they put out tapes all the time.... They’re releasing the most heinous, most horrible tapes of buildings falling down. And people are imagining there’s a lot of people in those buildings, or people in those buildings, and they don’t like it.... But they’ve got to finish what they started, and they’ve got to finish it fast, and we have to get on with life.
Trump didn't even mention the aid workers who were killed. In fact, he didn't mention aid at all. He didn't mention civilians in any context whatsoever.
His only comment was that Israel needs to prosecute the war harder and stop letting people see the buildings they're destroying because it's bad PR. That's it.
So go ahead. Slam Biden for not caring enough about Palestinians. But make no mistake: He cares a whole lot more than Donald Trump does. Trump actively wants to kill more Gazans and he wants to kill them faster. His attitude toward Palestinians is simple: Starve them, kill them, whatever. Just get it over with.
It's what a MAN does. A BUSINESSman, who means BUSINESS and TELLS IT LIKE IT IS.
And after Israel is done with THEIR brown people, we're gonna deal with OUR brown people. No more fooling around! And also those uppity wimmin, and the homos too.
Music to the ears of the MAGAts. And the Good Germans will nod along.
Ladies and gentlemen, your modern Republican Party.
↑ Not hyperbole ↑
More than half of Israelis are every bit as “brown” as Palestinians.
Shhh. Don't interfere with the left's colonialism narrative with facts, you Zionist fascist!
Yabbut they're GOOD browns, and also White people. Not like those filthy disease-carrying immigrants who are lazy and also stealing our jobs and poisoning the blood of our country.
Sure, but Jewish Israelis definitely do not see themselves in solidarity with brown people all over the world, even if their skin tones are darker than the average Caucasian. They definitely see themselves as "white" much like how lots of Latinos and Asians also would like to see themselves as "white," if the guardians of whiteness (i.e. white Christian people) would allow them into the group.
"They definitely see themselves as "white" much like how lots of Latinos..."
In fairness, lots of Latinos are actually whiter than your typical White supremacist. People wrongly assume that "Latino" means "Brown" as if it where a race, when it is not. There are White Latinos, Brown ones, Black ones, and every other skin tone in between. Heck, Uruguay is nearly 90% White, and it is a Latino country.
My point is that the stuff that is going on in the Middle East has nothing to do with skin color. I recognize that a lot of people like to frame the conflict in those terms but that is inaccurate.
I also believe that most people with Jewish ancestry know that the guardians of whiteness do not consider them to be “white” even if they have blond hair and blue eyes.
I'm a MAN! I'm a
WEATHERBUSINESS man!"He cares a whole lot more than Donald Trump does."
is that really the bar?
of COURSE trump does not care. like Jared, he sees gaza as a real estate opportunity
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/jared-kushner-israel-gaza-waterfront-property
but jesus, can we not have higher expectations than "well, the orange guy is worse"?
We have a choice between two men. So take your nonsense elsewhere. Biden cares and Trump is his typical amoral asshole self. That’s it Bud.
None of this about an American election or us, besides the fact we are arming the war criminals and otherwise doing nothing to stop the massacre and complete destruction of Gaza.
Don't be silly. We are not the ones arming Hamas.
War crimes can only be committed by sovereign states, which Hamas isn't. They are your regular run of the mill evil terrorist group.
Israel on the other hand is the war criminal nation that is intentionally killing innocents in a far greater order of magnitude than anything Hamas can do, and they are definitely being armed by the US.
This is false. You do not have to be a state to be guilty of war crimes. Individuals and non-state groups can also be guilty. This is how a bunch of Bosnian Serbs have found themselves incarcerated in the Hague.
What is true is that only states can be prosecuted in the International Court of Justice. That is the limit of its jurisdiction.
To prosecute non-state actors, you need to bring charges to the International Criminal Court. That's who has jurisdiction of entities like Hamas and its members.
Of course, Israel (and the US) can't bring charges to the ICC, because they do not accept its legitimacy.
Technically speaking, war can only be committed by sovereign states; war crimes are committed by individuals. There is also the category of "crimes against humanity", which tends to be conflated with war crimes even though the two categories are quite different. Torturing prisoners, for instance, is a crime against humanity whether there's a war on or not. Torturing prisoners of war is also a war crime.
That's very short term thinking. Longer term thinking takes note that, once again, we're faced with choosing the lesser of two evils, (I agree that one of them is MUCH more evil than the other) and addresses how to get a better situation in future presidential elections.
I have no solutions to offer at this time, but if people don't think about it nobody will ever come up with an answer.
You were never going to vote for Biden under any circumstances anyway, so you can drop the faux outrage.
Higher expectations?
Did you watch the press conference today?
Being an adult often means having to choose the least worst option. I don't want to pay for a new roof and furnace this year, but I also don't want to be rained on in my bedroom and freeze during the night. I had higher expectations when I bought this house 2 years ago that the inspection was correct and both were good enough to last for 5-10 years, but alas here I am talking to contractors about doing both.
Grow the fck up and pick from the choices you have, not the choices you wish you had.
I'm in the same boat re: the roof, except it was less than a year when I discovered the problem. *#%$' roof inspector!
"And people are imagining there’s a lot of people in those buildings, or people in those buildings..."
What is wrong with people, anyway? Thinking that there might be people in an apartment building? In a home? A hospital? Sheesh.
poor baby is tired of people expecting him to pretend to give a shit about all those starving civilians, so bibi just needs to nut up, be 'tough', and kill a couple hundred thousand more people, pronto
then trump can get back to what he does best: sandbagging the feckless american legal system and mugging for the cameras
Wiping out all the Palestinians is a multi-million person purge. A bit more than "just" a couple hundred thousand there.
OT, but was thinking about the whole AI/consciousness thing
people pose questions to these systems and get fairly human-sounding responses, which leads some people to start asking if/when they can achieve consciousness
but that's sort of ignoring the reality of the system: it's actually having millions of simultaneous interactions with different users
and that goes waaaaay beyond the capabilities of any individual human consciousness; it's more like a distributed borg consciousness
which i find even scarier than achieving a single human-grade consciousness
Not to worry, AI is not conscious or consciousness, far from it.
*yet*
and as far as i know, there's no universally accepted definition of consciousness, so it would be tough to say what is or what isn't
i'm also open to the idea that there's more than one type of consciousness, not just the kind that happens between our ears
consciousness doesn't (just) happen between our ears
you have a candidate for a new 'turing test'?
I knew a guy who swore his consciousness was located in front of his face, maybe 6" out. He did have real issues with boundaries.
All your consciousness are belong to us.
turkatron:
what are you doing? get out of my mind!
Alia of the Knife does as her wont.
That's the problem. We have not clearly defined either consciousness or intelligence, so when a machine achieves either one we may not recognize it.
“The United States was looking into a media report that the Israeli military has been using artificial intelligence to help identify bombing targets in Gaza”
It seems to me that what we should be thinking about with ai is not consciousness but whether or not it will have a conscience.
Sure, it's responding to millions of people, but in each conversation it has no knowledge of the other conversations. It "wakes up" when an interaction with a particular person begins, "thinks" while it is talking until it comes to its last word, and then "sleeps", forgetting everything that has happened. If you interact with it further, it begins its life anew at the beginning of the first interaction, reads through to the current one, and "speaks" until it comes to a conclusion, then again "falls asleep". While it is not producing a response, it has no inner life. Its wheels are not spinning. And it is not pondering its interactions with the other millions of people. So rather than it being one entity interacting with millions, it is a single vast entity, sleeping like Cthulhu, who is cloned each time someone comes along to speak with it.
Depending on which service you're using and whether you've paid, they may be retaining the interaction for training, but this isn't part of the AI's memory until it has been trained. And some services may keep a log of your interaction, so when Cthulhu awakes he has more notes to read through before he responds, but he still is unaware of all the other petitioners speaking to him.
Seems Trump unwittingly expressed the vast gulf between privileged "elite" opinion and the common person, the latter speaking out against thia "war" because of life, the civilian human beings (bystanders) being killed, losing their lives, respecting life, while Trump is saying we need to get on with life, those pesky dead civilians, women and children are somehow getting in the way!
Once again the democrat is more pro-life…than the republican…
????
I appreciate that Kevin at least tries to be sane on this difficult topic. That's more than can be said about far too many lunatics on the Left
But I think the general criticism continuously promoted by the likes of Bret Stephens @ the NYT remains valid: Liberals and Lefties tend to view the current war (leaving aside past wars for now) in a manner biased against Israel.
And the fact that a few prominent Liberals like Schumer and Biden have remained generally supportive of Israel (even while calling for a change in Israel's leadership) does not immediately translate into the idea that Biden doesn't care enough about Palestinians.
The current conflict was deliberately initiated last October by Hamas. Biden described that initial attack in this manner:
"More than 1,300 innocent Israelis killed, including at least 31 American citizens, by the terrorist group Hamas.
Hundreds — hundreds of young people at a music festival of — the festival was for peace — for peace — gunned down as they ran for their lives.
Scores of innocents — from infants to elderly grandparents, Israelis and Americans — taken hostage.
Children slaughtered. Babies slaughtered. Entire families massacred.
Rape, beheadings, bodies burned alive.
Hamas committed atrocities that recall the worst ravages of ISIS, unleashing pure unadulterated evil upon the world.
There is no rationalizing it, no excusing it. Period."
And good for him. Speaking for myself, along with 1.) racist anti-racism and 2.) the cult of DEI, 3.) the Left's current embrace and explicit promotion of anti-Semitism is the third major wedge between me and a sociopolitical movement that I once thought tried to see all people equally, to promote freedom of expression, and to embrace rational dialog in the search for sustainable progress. The three problems I just mentioned, however, contradict each one of these goals.
At least Kevin refrains from such Leftist lunacies as "genocide Joe," "Glory to our Martyrs," or this little gem: "Down with the USA! Hamas is on the way!"
But he should not, in my opinion, encourage the idea, however tacitly, that Biden doesn't care enough about Palestinians. I think this statement bears repeating regarding Hamas and its 10/7 attack on Israel:
"There is no rationalizing it, no excusing it. Period."
Yes, I think it would be excellent to get rid of Netanyahu. And I have little issue with sane individuals who can promote rational arguments urging Israel to proceed with as much caution as possible around civilians.
But Kevin's post above mentions Palestinians three times; it mentions Israel five times; yet it mentions Hamas zero times. There are also no references to Hamas in any of the comments so far. And, in any discussion of this war, even a short blog post, that is an unacceptable oversight. And it reveals exactly the kind of Liberal bias against Israel that I'm talking about.
People pretty universally condemned Hamas months ago, when they committed their evil deeds, no one is required to always bring that back up when criticizing the massacre and destruction of Gaza that is ongoing.
The other day I mentioned Hamas should be sanctioned out of existence, party non grata, I'm not required to copy-paste that every comment I make, which would be silly, and is really just equivocation and deflection.
Hamas committed evil acts, and this does not and never will justify the destruction of Gaza and massacre of civilians, women and children, or blatant disregard for life and human rights and international humanitarian law.
@Jimm:
regarding this:
"People pretty universally condemned Hamas months ago, when they committed their evil deeds, no one is required to always bring that back up when criticizing the massacre and destruction of Gaza that is ongoing."
Sorry, but I do believe that you are demonstrating the sort of blind spot that I am criticizing. It is not possible to engage in any impartial and reality-based conversations about this war without mentioning Hamas.
Any such attempt that leaves out reference to Hamas is more or less by definition narrowminded. The cause for that narrowmindedness can be debated, the fact of the narrowmindedness cannot be.
Imagine writing a statement of any kind about America's response to 9/11 without any mention of al-Qaeda. Sure, America's response can be faulted in many ways. But if you neglect to mention al-Qaeda, you're probably revealing more about yourself than you're revealing about 9/11.
Since the response to 9/11 was war in both Iraq and Afghanistan, there are millions of statements (news articles, blog posts, political speeches, facebook posts, casusl conversations, etc.) about the response that don't mention 9/11.
Archduke Frans Ferdinand's name was also rarely mentioned on those fields in Flanders.
The first and second Congolese wars almost never include a mention of the Rwandan genocide, despite it being the precursor.
War often moves beyond the initial provocation. The war in Isreal has done so.
Jimm, don't feed the trolls!
Jimm clearly countered the troll.
Not feeding trolls is good advice normally, but in this particular case the response exposed the flaws in the argument in a clear and concise way. In some cases perhaps you have to feed the troll a morsel in order to prevent them from infecting others with their ideas.
it mentions Hamas zero times
kevin has posted plenty of comments re hamas, israel, and the conflict writ large
this was a post narrowly focused on trump's sociopathic detachment from the civilian suffering and utter lack of any proper human empathy
I hear you and agree with you in many ways. Hamas needs to be burned to the ground. Half of Gaza's population is under 18 and there hasn't been an election for Hamas in 20 years. I haven't seen anyone supporting Hamas.
For the last 15 years Bibi has been drifting harder and harder to the far right to maintain his coalition. I believe people are reacting more to Israel's hard right and continued occupation of Gaza and not supporting Hamas.
I don't view it as anti-semitic as opposed to anti-Bibi, anti-hard right displacing the Palestinians. And I certainly don't think it's in support of Hamas.
That's my take on it. Although, I have been surprised at the vitriolic support for the Palestinian civilians.
"Although, I have been surprised at the vitriolic support for the Palestinian civilians."
It's called anti-Semitism.
Maybe in whatever weird universe you inhabit. And in this place, I guess support for Isreali civilians is islamaphobic?
Forget thinking before writing, but can you at least read what you write?
Really all you had to say was "yes but ... HAMAS!!"
Yes, Leo could have just written that, but his entire schtick is to post the textual equivalent of a Gish Gallop every time.
Pretty much. And it's not like he'd take any other liberal position, either.
It's all he ever says.
“The current conflict was deliberately initiated last October by Hamas.”
There not only was a state of war on October 6th, but there has been every day since at least the moment Israel launched its sneak attack in 1967. Furthermore, Isreal committed a discreet act of state-sponsored terrorism on the night of October 5/6.
Somehow your bias blinds you to these simple facts.
@Ogemaniac:
May I ask where you get this information?
"There not only was a state of war on October 6th, but there has been every day since at least the moment Israel launched its sneak attack in 1967."
Here's Hilary Clinton in response:
“Remember, there was a ceasefire on October 6, that Hamas broke by their barbaric assault on peaceful civilians ... There was a ceasefire. It did not hold because Hamas chose to break it ... Hamas have consistently broken ceasefires over a number of years.”
And if your are indeed so determined to smear Israel with inaccurate and unsourced info, again, what does that say about you?
For that matter, what does it say about the Left as a whole? Well, to me it says one thing in particular: stay away.
Personally, I'd like an update on the initial blog post from Kevin admitting his oversight in failing to even mention Hamas. From you, it would be nice just to hear an "I was wrong."
But none of that will happen. When it comes to Israel, the "Just anti-Zionism" Left is in just as much of an impenetrable and bigoted mindset as are the members of the MAGA cult. The Left, in short, is increasingly detestable.
An economic blockade is an act of war. A military occupation is an act of war.
I don't care what Hillary Clinton or anyone else said. That a state of war existed prior to 10/7 is so obvious that denial of that fact is just dumb.
THIS. This is what makes me scream and tear at my face and hair: That these poltroons think that blandly denying the obvious is a clever debate trick rather than a debasing of language and the ideas being represented in that language.
These people either don't know just how dangerous the fire they're playing with is or they do and just don't care and I both hate and fear them for it. Why yes, I have been re-reading my dusty old Arendts from college days. Whyever do you ask?
So long as the Palestinians are quiet and accept their being the target of acts of war without disturbing the Israelis, Israelis pretend to themselves and everyone else that there isn't a war.
Dude, it's Leo. This is par for the course.
Everything SOV said right here is true. Leo, um, no.
You can't break a ceasefire unless you are already in a war you moron. There are no ceasefires between nations not or groups not at war. Clinton's comment actually goes against your wrong argument.
Sorry, but I think your head is just filled with lies. You insist on not considering past conflicts, as if this recent flare up happened in a vacuum.
It didn't.
Biden is clearly better than the alternative, as far respecting Palestinian rights along with every other consideration.
But he did LIE about seeing pictures of beheaded babies; that's blood libel-level slander.
And how tone deaf is having a music festival right outside of what is effectively a concentration camp?
If an honest person of goodwill wants to condemn Hamas' October 7 attack -- as any honest person of goodwill ought to want to do -- should he not also condemn the decades-long denial of the slightest pretense of justice to the Palestinians and to the Gazans, a denial of justice that virtually any country would take as justification for violence?
America certainly would.
We don't know that. For all we know, the Israeli propaganda ministry mocked up pictures of headless babies to show him. They have been shameless.
And having a big happy music fest, right next door to a concentration camp? Come on, man! It's the Israeli way!
As is the denial of justice. They've also defined any criticism of them as ANTISEMITISM.
Any Zionists reading this, please remember when you decide who to vote for in November.
The current episode of the conflict was initiated last October by Hamas. The conflict was well established by the time of the 1967 war, which is as far back as my memory goes. For my whole life, Palestinians have been committing atrocities against Israeli Jews and Israeli Jews have been committing atrocities against Palestinians. I find it impossible to muster any sympathy for either side.
So we see what Biden does when he cares about the slaughter of 1200 people, mostly civilians, even if some of his claims have turned out to be false. More than 30,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been slaughtered by the Israelis. What is Biden's equivalent speech? The best he can do is that it is unacceptable that 7 white people were killed while trying to feed Palestinians.
Drum is clearly right that Biden is much better than Trump on this subject. It is also true that Biden's comments have fallen far short of decency. And it is even more true that the people who think that the mass slaughter of Palestinians can be justified by the Hamas attack are little better than Hamas, albeit armchair sociopaths rather than ones who act on it.
Reminding us that, as Kamala Harris noted during the 2016 primaries, Joe Biden was opposed to school busing early in his political career.
He's basically "racist light," as opposed to the alternative, who is "racist heavy."
"Joe Biden was opposed to school busing early in his political career."
Most of the american public was opposed to that sort of school busing, too.
But sure, the man who was VP to the first Black president, and who has as his own VP the first Black/southeast Asian person to hold that office, and two-thirds of whose judicial nominees are "Black, Hispanic, Asian American or members of another racial or ethnic minority group"* is "racist light."
If Biden is "racist light," I wish that a lot more of our political leadership aspired to be more like him.
______
* As per the Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/12/04/most-of-bidens-appointed-judges-to-date-are-women-racial-or-ethnic-minorities-a-first-for-any-president/#:~:text=Nearly%20two%2Dthirds%20of%20the,from%20the%20Federal%20Judicial%20Center.
With respect, I submit that ProbStats factoid is a demonstration of how people can change ... and for the better.
That too.
I think this suggests a somewhat simpleminded way of understanding racism. True there are the loud and proud racists, including Trump and many of his supporters, as compared with people who try to hide their racism.
But what we see with Biden (and to a degree with Drum) is a situation of growing up with a story told from a European perspective about the brave Israelis beset by unjustifiably hostile Arabs, that they can't break free of, although both are being somewhat forced to by how awful Israel's current behavior is. It is a story that was learned without reference to race, and with the Holocaust a thing of the not distant past when they were growing up. That helps make the dismissal of the Palestinians in their mind actually appear like the anti-racist support for the Jews. (For young people it can be hard to see Jews as the victims of racism, but if one is older one grew up at a time when that was not hard at all).
To think that Biden is generally racist is to miss decades of his political career. The same is true of Drum and his political writing. But even people who generally fight against racism can be tricked by stories they grew up with, particularly when they are not posed in terms of race.
Lon Becker,
Well written comment. The middle paragraph in particular.
I'm an older liberal who lionized Israel 30 years ago. I absorbed the euro-centric story of Israel, it was in the air. Palestinians, on the other hand, were impenetrably foreign. Screaming crowds in funny clothes, a guy in a ski mask on a balcony at the Munich Olympics.
Realizing I/P is a story with two sides has been slow and painful. Re-conceiving Israel is too much for many people I know, but the mythology is broken. Their children aren't buying it, the monolith is shattered.
Kevin Drum is an interesting case. He sees why the young see I/P differently
https://jabberwocking.com/seeing-israel-through-young-eyes/
He call the views of the young ahistorical, and he made that clearer, or muddier, by noting he also wrote his history of the conflict
https://jabberwocking.com/a-brief-history-of-modern-palestine/
Muddier for me, because I read his history and cannot see why it shows the views of the young are historical.
His history is good for being so brief, but to my mind it gest one key fact wrong, the 1947 UN partition (he shows the map).
Drum calls this a UN Partition, but it wasn't and couldn't be a partition, because dividing land without involving the people living on the land breaks the UN Charter which calls for self-determination. And in fact the map itself is labeled a "Plan of Partition" "Proposed by the Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question". It was, and could only be, a plan, a proposal, a recommendation. It could only become a UN sanctioned partition after a process that included inhabitants.
The Arab League called this out, they were absolutely in the right legally. But UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) passed. Israel claimed the mantle of international law, treating a recommendation as a mandate, and this fiction has persisted ever since.
In Kevin Drum's history the first bullet point is:
"1948: Arabs launch a war of destruction against Israel."
A sentence that only makes sense if you consider 181 (II) a mandate, which it could not be because that would violate the UN Charter.
An extraordinarily successful sleight of hand, which to my mind complicates describing the views of young people as "ahistorical".
We all need a way to tell the good guys from the bad guys. You seem to conclude that Liberals are the biased bad guys, then you go looking for evidence to confirm your conclusion. I found evidence that the dog ate my homework, but my grade four teacher was biased against me.
Wow, you managed to put in your regular idiotic racist rant against DEI and anti-racism complaints even in an article about the genocide going on in Gaza. Talk about a single minded right wing white supremacist troll.
Videotapes haven't been used in a couple of decades. His mind is going fast.
This is where Israel was after October 7....the psychic shock was and is palatable.
Here is the US in an exactly similar situation: (this is less than 3 minutes long, but see especially after 1:20....)
https://youtu.be/uZLVUiG1nUY?si=eWRLA7guSalrh1xR
What is ironic is how very successful Hamas has been...they are close to total victory in moving the Palestinian case forward....which is why, I suppose, in a recent poll, 71% of Palestinians support Oct 7, and presumably the promised repeats.
The loss of Palestinian lives for this victory was a cheap price to pay for so sweeping a change in perceptions and reality on the ground. This was not an ironic comment.
Traveller
Hamas' victory was quite simple: they slaughtered about 1200 people on 7OCT, took some prisoners, and then just hunkered down to endure the coming onslaught. It is Israel's actions since then that has made Hamas' victory complete. Israel has killed 20X as many people as Hamas did, and mostly women and children. They have bombed hospitals and aid caravans and schools and apartment buildings and mosques, and have basically acted more like a rogue state than a decent country. Bibi's public statements have made clear that he intends to stay the course.
This is why most decent countries are seriously reconsidering whether support for Israel is moral.
This is what I'd come here to say.
Why is it okay for Israel to kill so many more?
Israel chose to kill these people. Hamas did not choose this or force this 'price'. Israel chose this and is fully responsible for it.
Hamas was starting to lose support in Gaza. There were even open protests against their rule--shocking considering how Hamas dealt with the Fatah supporters. Hamas attack Israel to trigger this reaction, and Netanyahu obliged because he is trying to save his own skin. And it takes pressure off the settler movement.
So, ready to call a genocide a genocide yet?
Are you kidding?
BTW, I'm not defending Israel's conduct of the war....they have been very risk adverse in reference to losing soldiers lives...I think their military losses are as of 2 days ago, 256 soldiers so far...really remarkable in terms of the time spent on an active battlefield.
This has been really poor strategy on their part no matter how well it plays on the home front. It is also notable to me to see the demonstrations in Jerusalem against the Israeli government, but not a peep out of anyone in Gaza.
Of course, the difference is that Hamas will kill you for dissent....no one, least of all myself can forget the images of Hamas dragging the bodies of Fatah supporters dead and murdered and dragged through the dusty streets of Gaza in 2007.
None of which is to excuse Israel at all....the killing of the Aide workers is just the last of some real bad actions...not genocide or anything like that but...you just have to shake your head in disbelief.....the report on this will be released tomorrow, though, at this moment, the only thing that will satisfy me in these regards is to bring the officers that ordered the attack up on Courts Martial murder charges.
War is an ugly business. Traveller
We will have to see what Israel does with transparency and follow through on their own bad actions. (though were I prepare a defense, No Orders were received and driving on a coastal road, in the dark, in the dead of night...can never be wise.
Who can forget that the IDF dragged naked bodies of suspected and actual combatants?
Well, apparently you can.
Who can forget that the IDF was caught shooting civilians and aid workers the week before 10/7?
Well, apparently you can.
Who can forget that the IDF killed 10 Palestinian civilians for every one Israeli killed in the prior decade?
Well..
What about the 20+ times killed on and since?
Thank you. I choked at
How are Gazans, starving and in terror of being shot or bombed by the Israelis, supposed to be "protesting"?? And why would they protest Hamas? It's the Israelis who are killing them, who are starving them, who have deprived them of water, homes, medical help, all the infrastructure of civilization!
Not Hamas. Israel.
Are you really suggesting that it is significant that the people hiding from Israelis bombs are not going out in crowds to protest Hamas? It is hard to be impressively stupid on a topic in which so much stupid is said. But that is impressive.
There were some protests against Hamas in Gaza prior to their attack on Israel.
What a bunch of bullcrap.
"I think their military losses are as of 2 days ago, 256 soldiers so far...really remarkable in terms of the time spent on an active battlefield."
Not really when you consider that it is not an actual battlefield, it's a killing field where one side is made up of a small number of terrorists, and the other is a massive terrorist army that prefers to drop bombs and missiles from afar.
"It is also notable to me to see the demonstrations in Jerusalem against the Israeli government, but not a peep out of anyone in Gaza."
Hard for people to come out and protest when the entire population is being bombed and starved to death by the invading army.
"not genocide or anything like that but"
Oh sure, intentionally bombing an entire population of civilians, intentionally destroying all life sustaining basic necessities including hospitals, intentionally starving people to death, and multiple government officials directly or underhandedly calling for the entire population to be killed or removed is not genocide or anything like that.
Back in October when this started, people told him that what's happening right now was the most likely outcome. In fact many people told him that. He also belittled our intelligence, our rationality, our experience, whatever.
So what did you expect when the predicted happened? An admission of error? Of course not. As you know, when people of his sort find they've painted themselves into a corner, they double down on the stupidity. Because them not being wrong is eversomuchmore important than dealing with what's actually happening, on the ground and right now.
Indeed. Further example: Israel is apparently banning shipments of chlorine tablets into Gaza, arguing that they are "dual use" and not merely necessary for disinfecting water in a place where the municipal water treatment and delivery systems have been destroyed.
Not sure how ensuring the spread of waterborne disease is a legit method of attacking Hamas, but there you go.
Anyone who has followed Trump’s comments regarding “strength” over the years is unsurprised by his comments regarding Gaza. Remember what he said in 1990:
“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Trump said. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”
When Trump speaks of “strength” he is not just talking about military strength. He is talking about the strength of amorality. The “strength” to have no compassion. He is far from the only person who thinks like this and there are many in this country, Israel, Gaza, and elsewhere who wish to have their government act under those terms.
There is a very good possibility that Trump and his amoral minions will take over this country next year. When that happens I suspect blogs like Kevin’s will be shut down and those who disagree will be silenced. Biden is a man of compassion and I trust him to steer this country in the right direction. He is our only hope.
"When Trump speaks of “strength” he..."
When Trump talks about "strength" he means "suppressing the population". That is what he wants to do, and that is what he will do if he wins.
If the examples of Russia and Hungary are anything to go by, it's much easier for modern-day dictators to simply drown out voices like Kevin's with thousands more blogs making up lies to discredit Kevin. Think: things like "Kevin is a pedophile" with doctored photos, so that nobody wants to read Kevin's blog anymore. You get your opposition to self-censor and withdraw from the public sphere to stop the personal doxxing and smearing... you don't actually get heavy-handed by shutting them down.
" it's much easier for modern-day dictators..."
Yes, by that is not what Trump wants to do. He wants to suppres the population, and he is much worst than Orban and Putin, who do it "only" as means to (vile) ends.
"When that happens I suspect blogs like Kevin’s will be shut down and those who disagree will be silenced."
That is not going to happen. Trump is a monster and a narcissistic sociopath, but he is also an incompetent buffoon. The layers of checks and balances in the federal and state systems of government will block whatever nonsense Trump attempts. Also, if Trump really tries to seize power, he will have to break many laws and also get a small army of appointees to break many laws. Even diehard loyalists appointed by Trump will know that Trump uses people up and then throws them under the bus. Trump will never gain the critical mass of nutty appointees he needs to attempt a government takeover. With Trump, it's really about whining and posturing.
At least I hope I am right.
Of course Trump is quite dangerous as president. His international actions might pose the most dangers. He might pull the US out of NATO, demand Ukraine give lands to Russia, declare the US will not defend Taiwan, pull US troops out of Korea, and who knows what else.
Trump puts Democratic Zionists in a double bind.
Drum is, of course, right that Biden is better on this topic than Trump, a very low standard, but sadly the standard that will be important in November. It is also true, given the atrocities being committed in Gaza that good people should be putting what pressure they can on Biden to do more to stop the deaths of Gazans, by either bombs or starvation. These things can both be true, and in fact are.
Biden is better than Trump, but how much better? I think we need a standard. I have a suggestion.
As a fifth grader, I knew next to nothing that stood the test of time with one exception. I knew that people who told me "I'm right, you're wrong, and this conversation is over" where wrong. That kid is my baseline. He didn't know enough to do anything significant, but he knew enough not to do any harm.
I'm not aware of anyone above that baseline who are also above Biden and can win an election.
I'm not aware of a currently elected Republican above that baseline.
There may be currently elected Democrats below that baseline, but they have little power, and that is important.
On the one hand, President Biden made the easy choice to care about humanity. From there is gets complicated.
On the other hand, President Biden's predecessor made the easy choice to care about President Biden's predecessor. From there it gets complicated.
My inner fifth grader made the easy choice to support President Biden and oppose his predecessor in every way possible, then he asked me if I agree, and I said, "Kid ... you have no idea how right you are."
I might be wrong about currently elected Republicans above the baseline, but it seems to me like they've all been purged.
"This isn't a Republican Speaker we have right now, this is a Democrat Speaker of the House," Greene said. "There is zero daylight between what Nancy Pelosi did last Congress, and what Mike Johnson is doing now as our so-called Republican Speaker of the House."
Even those Republicans who are about as low beyond the “baseline” are in danger of being purged. In order to be a true Trumpian the baseline is lunacy.
For some "Christians", the end times require a restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem---and clearing out Gaza is a step in that direction.
That is who Trump is appealing to--his base.
Trump always sides with whomever he deems 'strong' vs those who are weak. That this aligns with the beliefs of his "Christian" base is unlikely to be his main motivator.
Those "Christians" can eat a bag of dicks. For all their desire to bring about the End Times and ascend into heaven, they sure do also care about making sure everyone here on Earth is miserable. Why bother with policing trans or gay or black or undocumented people so harshly if you allegedly know that you're going to heaven where everything will be perfect? (This is one of the tells that they aren't really Christian. Another is their total lack of knowledge of what the Bible or the church they belong to actually says/preaches.)
When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. [...] And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. - Revelations 20:7
Trump, right?