Interesting theory, although some of the speculation going around is that this is a political move pushed by federal Democrats like Chuck Schumer and the like (I.e. shitting themselves over losing seats in Long Island). Either way, not a good look, and I doubt this will even help politically.
If "accused" means "charged" then absolutely not. Local police have, as they generally do, charged protestors with some selected kinds of nonsense whether technically-valid or not, in addition to just roughing them up and arresting them and then admitting they didn't do anything wrong and letting them go.
The federal government has bought into a certain amount of the propaganda and said some ignorant shit, and hasn't been doing much to discourage the police from doing that, but as far as I'm aware, "antisemitism" in the current propaganda construction is still perfectly legal and likely to remain so (whatever non-binding resolutions congress wants to make about it.)
Trucker? Why is u looping in pootin's lapdog here?
While my statement was hyperbolic, your additional context doesn't make it look any better but I do appreciate the input so people can see for themselves :)
I looped in Tucker because it kinda looked like you asked a question implying a certain answer, and then tried to make fun of me when I provided the answer (which was different than the one you implied).
Your joke was a hyperbolic exaggeration of an imaginary situation where Biden is the primary authority suppressing criticism of Israel. He isn't. Roughly in order, it's local police, then congress (not really), then Biden (not at all). That's why I reacted negatively to the joke, and to your clarification of "actual facts."
I left some room for reasonable interpretation of what you said, since "accuse" can mean either formal or informal and they're very different here. But "imprison" and "federal and state" kind of biases the interpretation towards something formal. But in any case, when I clarified exactly what I think about it, you sent me a clown emoji and got hostile about it and claimed I was changing my position. And you're confused that I'm not being super friendly? There's a big difference between someone not being polite to you and them speaking in bad faith.
I sort of have a hair trigger for this stuff because I'm accustomed at this point to all the propaganda-bots coming out of the woodwork saying "Biden Biden Biden" any time they get a chance to draw some weird tortured-logic connection between him and some unrelated story about something bad. So if it sounded like I jumped down your throat I apologize. But Biden doesn't really have much to do with Israel rejecting the cease fire, or with suppression of the protests, so it's gonna irritate me whenever someone pops into a story to bring his name into the picture out of nowhere.
Yeah, pretty much. This story goes into some details. If that's accurate, then the objections the Israelis have to the current plan boil down to:
They want the deal to allow them to keep fighting the war and keep troops in Gaza (after its terms are fully implemented, which generally isn't how a cease fire works)
They want to be able to keep Palestinians they have ("Iraeli veto over prisoners") while demanding the fast release of all Israelis that Hamas has ("Hamas has suggested a framework that would stretch out the hostage release")
This little section I think gets to the heart of it:
Israel has consistently opposed any deal that explicitly calls for a permanent cease-fire or an end to the war, and has said it would not agree to either until it felt its military offensive had achieved its goals. Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that the Hamas timetable would commit Israel to ending the war while Hamas still holds hostages, leaving Israel without any leverage.
It's a very cunning little construction. The deal involves the release of all hostages, of course, in exchange for the end of the war. He's placing "commit Israel to ending the war" (after the deal) next to "Hamas still holds hostages" (before the deal) and getting all upset that they can't have the benefits of the deal before agreeing to their side of it, and also they want to avoid having to uphold substantive parts after agreeing to it.
Hamas must be deposed for meaningful safety, they've said they want to do October 7th over and over again. This is a last minute deal for them to try and weasel their way out of ultimate consequences for what they have done.
Occupying Gaza is probably also a good call considering their unilateral withdrawal arguably led directly to October 7th. I expect they will stay, try to implement a puppet government, do a little nation building, and only leave once Gaza is pacified. If this is not possible, expect more annexations and settlements.
Likud materially supports Hamas, in my opinion specifically because of their propensity for violence that was useful to Likud's goals of sabotaging the peace process.
Increasing the violence and repression as a solution to terrorism hasn't been working for decades in Israel; it's unlikely that doing more of it would suddenly start working now
Your whole premise that Netanyahu is aiming to increase the safety of the Israelis is totally at odds with his actual behavior
It's not divide and conquer, that implies keeping multiple groups at parity and fighting each other. Israel intentionally kept the crazies in charge to undermine the viability of a Palestinian state.
The rivalry continues to today, as detailed in the link it seems like you didn't read.
In March 2024, Hamas and its allied groups in the Gaza Strip criticized Abbas' appointment of Mohamed Mustafa as the Palestinian Authority's new prime minister following Mohammed Shtayyeh's resignation. They issued a statement referring to the changes as "formal steps that are devoid of substance" and questioned the Palestinian Authority's ability to properly represent the Palestinian people. In response, Fatah condemned Hamas as being itself disconnected from the Palestinian people and accused them of "having caused the return of the Israeli occupation of Gaza" by "undertaking the October 7 adventure".
Later that month, Hamas accused Fatah of sending security officers into northern Gaza in collaboration with Israel, saying it had arrested six individuals and were "in pursuit" of the others. The Palestinian Authority issued a statement refuting the claims by Hamas.
But Hamas won, they completely control the 'unity' government and Fatah have vastly less power. If divide and conquer was the goal Netanyahu would have been funneling resources to Fatah and not Hamas. But he has consistently empowered Hamas because the international community can't accept a Hamas-led state.
Our fundamentally inhuman treatment of the Palestinian people led to October 7.
There are only two ways to prevent it happening again. We could stop the unconscionable deprivations we inflict on the Palestinian people or we could speed up the genocide we've been engaged in.
No surprises that the government compromised of war criminals and people the Israeli courts have deemed to be terrorists are going for the later. The far right are in charge and they're pretty open that this is the goal.
They sure got the ability to ear Gaza and west bank by themselves but loss of US support would make their geopolitical situation untenable mid to long term. That's my thinking and common understanding in geopolitical circles.
Is Israel government and military deranged enough to think they can go forward on their own?
US support for Israel continuing the current conflict or US support for Israel in general? If really forced into it, maybe the Democrats can withdraw their blessing for the current conflict, but I don't see how they could end support for Israel. If Putin wins the US election who knows what could happen but short of that Israel is just too important to the US empire and they know it. I mostly believe the official line from Washington that they don't have that much leverage against Israel - in the sense that Bibi&co have enough counter levers to make acting against them more costly than it's worth for the Democrats.
Hence the bullshit antisemitism law, the brutalizing of campus protests, etc. Democrats are even willing to drive down turn out among their base in one of the most important elections in US history over this - I just don't see them doing that if they had a better card to play.
Yes, I am also a bit surprised by Democratic party willing to risk election over this but I am guessing their calculation is that losing support of Israel lobby is 100% loss?
But yeah at this rate Putin is gaining serious ground in the US presidential elections. Not sure how much face US got left to lose, but likely won't be anything left.
I am guessing their calculation is that losing support of Israel lobby is 100% loss?
Yeah, I've been presuming that's a significant part of it. That and the importance of a dependent and dependable ally to help anchor US security architecture in a vital region. Israel needs US imperial presence in the region. Saudi just benefits from it.
Yeah. It doesn't take this army of super sophisticated technology to overcome Hamas's souped-up mortars and the occasional rock. Diplomatic support and UN vetoes is where the US really can make a difference, and does.
I phrased my point a little poorly maybe -- I meant that from Israel's POV, I think US weapons aren't critical (and definitely not to fight against Hamas, although that's not their only regional enemy), but US diplomatic aid is absolutely crucial.
The issue that Israel's POV is working on a project to wipe out a civilian population so they can take all their land and pretend they never existed, and so US aid shouldn't be looked at purely through the lens of what's needed by Israel at any given time, is a pretty relevant addition to that, yes. 100%.
Hamas is a response to Israeli violence and colonialism for the last 70 years. You can depose them but another group will rise up with arms to resist colonialism as long as Israel keeps doing the same thing. And they did before Hamas, so of course they will after. Plus, it will be even harder as these events drive recruitment for Hamas. America didn't get rid of the Taliban by bombing Afghanistan for 20 years, either. It doesn't work.
Israel has been occupying Gaza the whole time despite their rhetoric. They control all their infrastructure and built a big wall to keep them in, and control all travel in and out, plus they constantly spied on them with everything from drones to listening devices to taking random hostages and trying to get info out of them. Gaza doesn't have control of their own food, power, trash, travel, water, sea territory, money, etc. That's basically an occupation, no matter what they say. The only reason to need to take it a step farther and put troops on the inside instead of all along the wall outside is so they can kill more Palestinians.
The scare tactics of claiming they'll never be safe is how you get a genocide, both now and in the past. It's that thought in WW2 that leads to rhetoric like, "We tried to let them live in peace with these stars and putting them in their own spaces in towns, but they keep causing trouble. They even want to do a Warsaw Ghetto Uprising over and over again. We're going to need to kill all the Jews, it's just the only solution."
I agreed with you up until your last paragraph: that is some serious exaggerating. Never did the original commenter say that the solution was to kill all Palestinians.
I don't agree with their view that eradicating Hamas followed by a temporary occupation by Israël will magically help the Palestinian people, but reducing an opposing viewpoint to a literal Nazi isn't going to help or convince anyone.
That's fair. The last paragraph I should have attributed to the Zionist thought instead of that commenter in particular. I mostly just wanted to demonstrate how the "They want to do an October 7th over and over again!" scare tactic leads to the genocidal thoughts and actions we see happening now. I was commenting while emotional, I'll edit it so it's not so harsh and personally aggressive.
It's an ancient political tactic of "I was just defending myself". What was it the Nazis said about Jews? Oh right, they were just "defending themselves".
It is not a statement designed to convince. It is designed as supporting evidence for a certain mental model, yes, but to a degree that's pretty hard to appreciate unless you've spent some time with this mindset, they are not operating in a world where one person says an argument, and the other person evaluates it critically and decides whether to accept or reject it.
Their model is that if a person in authority says an argument, people "under" that person's authority are obligated to accept it. To evaluate for yourself whether the thing the big NYPD sergeant is firmly telling you is terrorist propaganda, is actually terrorist propaganda or not, is already a subversive act that may be punished by harsh criticism and humiliation at least, and possibly a total expulsion from the social circle or threats to your physical safety.
It's not a good model, but it's the one they operate under, and it works for them as individuals for the most part. So that's what they run with.
People really should get used to keeping an eye out for this idea. It's the root of so much pettiness and bad faith, and so much good faith effort is put into trying to engage with it.
“How would these students know how to barricade a door?” Daughtry asked on Newsmax, as he charged that protesters wouldn’t have been capable of measures like locking doors with chains, blocking them with vending machines, or disabling security cameras.
Come the fuck on. I’m too old to have been through school shooter drills, but I’m not too stupid to remember that for the last 20 years this is what kids have been taught to do to deal with psychopaths with guns on campus. They start teaching it in kindergarten! At this point a kid not knowing how to do this stuff is like a kid that doesn’t know to stop, drop, and roll when on fire.
Or they watched too many bad ones where the characters make hella dumb decisions like investigating the spooky sound in the shed full of sharp objects.
They know perfectly well that they're spewing bullshit.
The facts don't matter to many people, sadly.
I know plenty of people who would go "heh damn college fucks deserved it" without knowing the first thing about what college or protest, simply "that generation getting what they deserve" is good enough
I'm too old for school shooter drills, but I'm like basically the perfect age for being terrified of velociraptors after watching Jurassic Park in theaters. Not only do I know how to barricade a door, but I also know how to use mirrors to visually trick people into seeing hallways that aren't there!
It also includes a man whose application “hearing loss,” and whose brother says he was “basically put to death.”
My grandmother was a painter and lost her vision. She was no longer able to do what she loved. In her last several years, every time we'd celebrate her birthday, she'd wonder why she was still alive. You can't look at MAiD requests simply, because every person has unique reasons that keep them going. Some people can bounce back from severe loss, and some cannot, or choose not to.
While I agree with a lot of points the article is making, I think we need to be calling for more critical review of MAiD applications, and increased oversight, not an outright reversal of the program. Those whom are applying due to lack of social safety nets need to be denied, and, most importantly, helped to find the resources required for them to be able to live a dignified and meaningful life if they so wish.
I don't think MAiD is the problem - it's our eroding social safety net that is the issue.
People should be able to end their lives with dignity at a time of their choosing. But they should be provided with the support they need to keep living as comfortably as they want.
““I’ve come to realize,” wrote Appel, “that euthanasia in Canada represents the cynical endgame of social provisioning with the brutal logic of late-stage capitalism — we’ll starve you of the funding you need to live a dignified life [. . .] and if you don’t like it, why don’t you just kill yourself?””
This is why Canadians need to talk about this stuff. Some MAiD recipients are being driven to suicide by an underfunded and ignored social safety net. That's horrible. Our society is rich enough that we should be able to provide a decent quality of life to people with disabilities.
We have a national belief that we have strong supports for those who need it. That doesn't seem to be the case.
It’s mostly the same in America - I have an invisible disability or two and it has been next to impossible to get access to the social safety net. The only viable avenue, if you aren’t visibly disabled, is to hire an attorney to work with the system.
That takes an humongous effort that not everyone can sustain on their own.
Why aren’t these systems activated at the point of diagnosis, for example? How many gaps are there in the safety net, really?
IMO I don't ever see them allowing you to stop being a consumer especially not in such a way that makes them look bad. Best can be done is a cop shooting you when you have a mental health crisis. I also could see it being a genuine population crisis if it weren't even more strict/bureaucracy-hell than MAiD.
Then of course, there will always be more people pushing back against programs like this than there ever will be for actually improving living conditions. People just don't want to see or hear any reference to death, continued suffering is a lot more indirect and nebulous and thus ignorable.
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