There's a strain of politics that sees what an unliveable hell our highly educated, Very Smart elites have created and insists that idiots off the street could do better (or no worse). I understand why people think that makes sense, but the thing is, it doesn't.
As loathe as I am to blame people for their problems, I'd say that class, whose vices I somewhat share, has history of over-promising—as always, except to Bush Minor of course, Vietnam. (—and the distorted history of the Great Society promulgated since the year of its birth.)
It should also be noted that for a substantial fraction of white people the most significant aspect of life making this particular hell unliveable is the merest lip-service to bearing respect for non-white people as human beings.
Melvin van Peebles' "The True American" features a damned black man who convinces Satan to make conditions in Black American Hell slightly better than before and, importantly, let the denizens of White American Hell _know_it_…for a strong net-increase of suffering when the two hells are considered together. (Satan rewards the inventive soul with a series of incarnations I don't remember well, but I'll vaguely recall their living-up to the reputation of Satan's rewards.)
I couldn't agree more. And I'm willing to do the hectoring: people on the left have a very profound political and ethical obligation to vote for Joe Biden in November. It is the only way to stop something even more obscene––hard as that is to imagine––than what is currently happening.
I listened to the Macklemore protest song and found it both powerful as an indictment of US actions and truly frightening for the vow to refuse to vote for Biden. God help us if that becomes more than a cathartic release.
Biden all too accurately represents the failures, moral and political, of US policy in the Middle East. So I get the fury at the prospect of giving him a vote. My own anger rises when I think of how so many voices have been desperately trying to get the US government and/or Americans to exert some leverage against Israeli actions through peaceful means. But calls for *peaceful* opposition through divestment and boycotting were met with scorching opposition and scorn––and yet look where we are, in the exact place that those in the BDS movement had been predicting and warning.
Step one is do whatever is necessary to step back from the precipice of what Trump (+ Christian nationalists) and Netanyahu (+Jewish settlers and fundamentalists) would do. And that means you have to vote for Biden.
FWIW, there is polling which indicates that the majority of college students list the middle east as their least important concern for November.
I think highly online political people are prone to overstating the importance and power of the protests because we want them to matter more than they do. Most people do not vote on foreign policy. Also Macklemore has been irrelevant for years
To add to your point, foreign policy is not up for vote anyway. Presidential administrations come and go, but generally the civil service and diplomatic corps generally pursues stable power relations, for good or ill.
Perfectly clear message and absolutely correct in my view. Vote for Biden or things will get very much worse both here in the US and in the Middle East. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party, to which I aspire to belong, presently is blinded by their disgust at the way Israel has managed the response to the heinous Hamas attack of Oct 7th, just as the US did in attacking Iraq after 9/11. I think Biden is doing a great job. He has shown support for Israel, but is trying to reign in the clearly right wing authoritarian/apartheid-like present regime in Israel. But there is not much more he can do than try to hold them back. He can’t possibly cut off relations with Israel. Trump would allow Israel to run roughshod over Palestine. He could not care a damn about Palestine as John Ganz rightly says. And that attitude could well lead to a more generalized war as we nearly saw recently with the relatively minor Israel/Iran tussle. There is no question things could get very much worse under Trump. No one should be under the illusion that both Biden and Trump are equally bad. That is the attitude that the elite took in Germany in 1933 when they thought they could “control” Hitler to do their bidding. Trump will just do whatever he wants and the progressives/freedom loving Americans be dammed. If we don’t vote for Biden, if we sit this election out, if we fool ourselves into thinking that it can’t get worse - beware!!! It certainly will under a Trump administration and the worst part of it is that you think demonstrating now is tough? Think again how it might be under Trump facing a National Guard with orders to “shoot when you see the whites of their eyes.” And think again how long it might be before we shake off a Trumpian administration. It will certainly not happen in 2028 - who knows how long it may take before reason again prevails?
The answer is never. History will decide that for us.
One of Trumpism's irresistible appeals is that maga promises to unburden humanity of reason. What people outside of the maga cult fail to appreciate about Trump is that his abject wretchedness as a president, businessman and human being is *his whole appeal.* Trump is an aspirational figure to them because he won the presidency through bigotry, misogyny and openly embracing fascism and political violence. He carries himself like a mafioso. And as the Stormy Daniels testimony in his trial revealed, Trump has lots of sexy sex and degrades women like a manly man should.
Trump gets away with stuff the voters want to get away with. With Trump, we have no need for fact or falsehood because the paradigm has shifted to "it's true because I want it to be true."
This is not the mentality of a civilization of reason. This is revenant totalitarianism. The bad news is that Trump didn't turn the magas into anything. This is what the Magavolkisch were all along, and as Donald's niece Mary says, "he gives people permission to be their worst selves."
People on the left thinking the movement would have more power outside the Democratic Party than within it follows exactly the same logic as Brexiteers thinking the UK would have more power outside the European Union than within it.
It's frustrating to not be in control of everything, but that's fuckin' life man.
Raise hell in your local primaries, raise hell on campus, raise hell in Chicago this summer, then behave yourself and act like an adult in the voting booth in November.
Raising hell in Chicago this summer could, in itself, throw the election to Trump. The Free Palestine movement, in failing to distance itself from Hamas and eliminationist anti-Zionism, has been a disaster—not least for the Palestinians.
Sure, perhaps. The Free Palestine movement bears the burden of both (a) being right about the issue on the merits and (b) conducting its advocacy in an efficacious way.
There are subtleties there and exercising pressure within the Democratic Party in a way that makes your coalition partners hate you is probably shortsighted. But fighting for influence inside the tent is a necessary part of American politics, and that's the path to power for the left.
Supporting Trump out of pique and online edgelordism on the other hand flunks both (a) and (b) above and is a path back into 90's style irrelevance for the left.
I’m concerned that the protesters’ maximalist view is not simply bad strategy, it’s a sincerely held ideological belief, often born out of inexcusable ignorance. It’s certainly a boon to Bibi and his cronies, as well as Hamas and Trump.
Some protestors have a maximalist view and a delusion that Israel could be un-established. Do all of them? I quite sure they don't.
I think many have mobilized because of what is the biggest political emergency of their lives so far, and a desire to stop the mass death of civilians (the killing of civilians being the crime most of the world correctly decried about Oct. 7th). For most of them, those are deaths that have a material connection to their lives (some as Palestinians and/or Muslims, some as Jews, some as US citizens).
I mean, it's not crazy to think that as things stand now in May, there might be tens of thousands of civilians alive right now that will either be dead or alive 8 weeks from now, and their best hope for remaining alive rests with the Biden administration among other entities.
No matter what many individual protesters may believe in, the collective voice is maximalist, with a seeming desire to eliminate Israel and Israelis altogether. It certainly goes beyond concern for the lives of innocent Palestinians. I’m a strong supporter in the 2 state solution as the fairest conceivably workable outcome, so this depresses and infuriates me. The fact that it strengthens Trump and the Israeli right makes things incalculably worse.
It's kids. You shoulda heard them back in the Vietnam War days. They managed to be absolutely correct on the big moral issue, and absolutely bonkers on ways and means. They have a keen nose for hypocrisy, but absolutely no idea how humans work.
I'm not sure what this means. Millions of Americans and Vietnamese died pointless deaths because the sophisticated grown-ups won out over the stupid kids. And the conclusion is... the kids fucked up? Maybe some of the wise adults should have taken their cue morally and picked up the strategic slack.
The kids' tactical stupidity (which they viewed as moral purity) meant that the grownups persisted in their killing longer than otherwise. Remember Nixon/Humphrey '68. Were the additional dead Vietnamese really worth the neat-o sloganeering? "Mao, Mao, Mao Tse-Tung/Revolution for the young."
Yes, the grownups deserve greater moral blame. But I'm a consequentialist. The kids made things worse.
Wholeheartedly agree. It’s clear to me that Hamas felt the need for the kind of spectacular assault that came on Oct 7th after years of Trump and his team doing everything they could to do an end-run around the Palestinians in an attempt to will the entire tangled issue to disappear: the embassy move, the Abraham Accords, the Golan Heights, tacit and explicit approval of unmitigated settlement building. In this sense, despite the immiseration of Gaza, Hamas got exactly what it wanted, and Palestine is back at the forefront of international politics.
As godawful as Biden has been on Palestine, he and his team at LEAST profess to desire a Palestinian state. He’s simply one more in a long line of feckless American leaders who claim to want two states and then proceed to use none of their considerable leverage to bring this about. But does anyone think Netanyahu’s approach to this war would change significantly without American support? Aside from his grotesque bloodlust and open desire for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, he’s got plenty of domestic problems that make the war politically prudent for him.
Anyway, being a single issue American voter this year is just a total moral abdication on so many crucial issues. To hand the vote to Trump over Palestine (my God, just typing that phrase feels totally insane) is to give up on Ukraine (which some may actively want; there’s an unfortunately large Venn diagram crossover of anti Israel and anti Ukraine weirdos), to give up on mitigating climate change, to abandon the pro-Labor policies of this administration, and to welcome the total destruction of the US civil service. Not to mention the economic chaos that will accompany a protectionist trade war. It’s hard not to hector
I'm sorry but this is very weak. You go on and on about how stupid Trump was to hand peace in the middle east to his idiot son in law, but what does it say that Biden dutifully adopted that plan in whole, and is still pursuing it to this very day, tens of thousands of deaths and bombings in multiple countries later?
I agree that Trump _was_ the worst president for Palestine ever, but Biden doubled down on his entire agenda and then added on the facilitation of mass bombing, pillaging, assassination and intentional starvation. Every time Biden makes even the slightest concession to the super-majority opinions of his party's voters (e.g. sanctioning settlers or IDF units) a few weeks later it is quietly rolled back.
I agree that (despite their lockstep policy conformity) the two presidents are characterologically distinct in meaningful ways. But nothing about the last 7 months (or in retrospect his entire career) has shown us that that redounds to Palestinian favor. Biden really has given the Israeli far right everything they want and has evinced vicious anti-Palestinian racism throughout.
As you say, Trump doesn't give a shit about Israelis or Palestinians. I do think he's more anti-Muslim and maybe even anti-Arab in temperament than Biden, but how do you look at the totality of Biden's statements and actions these many months and not conclude that he fucking _hates_ Palestinians? To Biden they are the moral opposite to the muscular Jew that he feels he was put on this earth to buttress. If I were Palestinian, why would I prefer the hateful zealot to the corrupt narcissist?
Biden has had three years of calm and then 7 months of nonstop crisis to distinguish his Palestine policy from his predecessor, and has steadfastly refused to do so. He still has another 6 months to change tack, but this apologia of how he's self-evidently good for Palestine is wholly unearned and at best premature. I would be delighted to be proved wrong, but that has to come from the admin, not pointing at how Trump was different from his predecessors. We get it, we live in hell, but Biden is also here because of Trump.
> I strongly believe a right-wing Israeli government, under the chaos of a second Trump administration, would attempt to go forward with annexation and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and God knows what permanent “solution” for Gaza.
These are things that are happening, right now! Yes, things can get worse, and they did, under Biden! Settlements are expanding, pogroms erupting, and Biden is on record that the war should continue until Hamas ceases to exist.
For the record I do want Biden to win, but I'm under no illusions that it's for Palestine's sake. They will be sacrificed for the sake of our many other crises, because this is a monstrous nation. I guess you feel you're doing your part to make his win possible, but I'm dubious that this argument-via-misdirection is helpful in converting anyone who is on the fence. Should probably either demand a change in policy or change the subject.
I dunno. If Hilary had won 2016 would the situation in Israel & Palestine been materialy different on Oct 6 than it was? I'd argue not, especially since Biden has been following the same Trump policy that looked to sideline the Palestinians in favor of a Saudi Israel deal. I guess my whole thing is for most of this century I've heard vote blue or this really bad thing will happen. I've voted blue & it still has happened, whether it be more war, greater wealth concentration, militarized police, etc. even though democrats have been in power. So I don't think it's unrealistic expectations or whatever, but that the democratic leadership have shown & still show people with nothing but contempt.
1. Most people do not vote based on foreign policy no matter what they say;
2. I think the media and chronically online are likely to overstate the power of the protest movements because they want the movements to have power for good and bad reasons.
3. I am pretty convinced that most people who say that Israel caused them not to vote for Biden would be able to find another reason not to vote for him in November if October 7th never happened;
4. I think we are extrapolating the passions of the campus protesters onto their fellow students too much because we want to. Axios and others have polls which have college students agree with Biden more than the encampment protesters
Great piece. Like most of us, I am very online. Biden's done a poor job on Israel-Palestine but pretty solid on most everything else with the Congress he has. Diplomacy on Ukraine was a masterstroke. Looking at the ledger, especially re: labor, he's been the most left president since Truman. We should reward him now that his is the Democratic nominee, if he loses it will send this country right, especially on immigration. I do find myself very annoyed with DSA and the activist left overall these days. I think this whole "Genocide Joe" thing is over the top. If you are Palestinian American, I get it. It really sucks but for everyone else... this shit can get really bad. Fuck the purity politics. We need a popular front (wink) to stop Trump. On the whole Biden has been a good president. It's time to get him over the line. Biden get's us closer to the world we want to see. Just tick the god damned box folks.
It is a very strange world where Ben-Gvnir and Students for Justice in Palestine both want the same thing, a second term for Trump.
The problem I have found with a lot of leftier types is that they also seem to be caught up in stupid rhetoric of the bully pulpit and the President as God-Emperor. It is not just on Israel but you see it for health insurance, student loan debt, court packing, etc. There is a certain kind of low-info lefty that is convinced the President can institute the world’s most generous welfare state with the snap of the fingers. Said person also seems convinced that Israel is a puppet state of the U.S.
I find it impossible to counter or combat this worldview.
I don't understand voting in our system as legitimately being self-expression of anything but one's answers to the questions 'With whom do you trust power the least?'.
As far as I can tell, Trump and Kushner's policy was less a good faith attempt at a 2-state solution as it was a purposeful snubbing of that, calculated to transition towards a 1-state solution where Bibi takes every opportunity to kill dissenting Palestinians and allow zealots to expand settlements to displace them. The US embassy move to Jerusalem, for example, signaled the US was no longer interested in hearing any Palestinian claims to Jersusalem, which is of course what has held up a 2-state solution for decades.
Biden is not perfect, but way better than the alternative.
Probably a minor point, but I wonder too about Trump-Biden differences on Israel in relation to law. At least not being a criminal is pretty central to Biden’s claim on legitimacy, but what happens if the ICC issues warrants against Israeli leadership? Trump telling the law to go fuck itself is just another Tuesday, but Biden is at least supposed to care about it. The lock the fantasy of Israel as avenging victim holds on the establishment imagination seems unbreakable, but still one wonders if they really want to “officially” side with war criminals.
I don't really have anything to add except that I'll recommend the piece. I'd hope this would some impact on the leftist committed to not voting for Biden, but I unfortunately don't think it will.
I won't be voting for Biden or Trump or RFK Jr. They're peas in a pod regarding Israel-Palestine.
Can things get worse? Absolutely, but I doubt anyone who voted for Biden expected him to be as pig-headed, recalcitrant, and utterly unsympathetic towards Palestinians as he has been. He is a nightmarish caricature of a stubborn politician who thinks he's right and will brook no opposition.
Whoever wins in November is going to be shit awful.
There's a strain of politics that sees what an unliveable hell our highly educated, Very Smart elites have created and insists that idiots off the street could do better (or no worse). I understand why people think that makes sense, but the thing is, it doesn't.
As loathe as I am to blame people for their problems, I'd say that class, whose vices I somewhat share, has history of over-promising—as always, except to Bush Minor of course, Vietnam. (—and the distorted history of the Great Society promulgated since the year of its birth.)
It should also be noted that for a substantial fraction of white people the most significant aspect of life making this particular hell unliveable is the merest lip-service to bearing respect for non-white people as human beings.
Melvin van Peebles' "The True American" features a damned black man who convinces Satan to make conditions in Black American Hell slightly better than before and, importantly, let the denizens of White American Hell _know_it_…for a strong net-increase of suffering when the two hells are considered together. (Satan rewards the inventive soul with a series of incarnations I don't remember well, but I'll vaguely recall their living-up to the reputation of Satan's rewards.)
I couldn't agree more. And I'm willing to do the hectoring: people on the left have a very profound political and ethical obligation to vote for Joe Biden in November. It is the only way to stop something even more obscene––hard as that is to imagine––than what is currently happening.
I listened to the Macklemore protest song and found it both powerful as an indictment of US actions and truly frightening for the vow to refuse to vote for Biden. God help us if that becomes more than a cathartic release.
Biden all too accurately represents the failures, moral and political, of US policy in the Middle East. So I get the fury at the prospect of giving him a vote. My own anger rises when I think of how so many voices have been desperately trying to get the US government and/or Americans to exert some leverage against Israeli actions through peaceful means. But calls for *peaceful* opposition through divestment and boycotting were met with scorching opposition and scorn––and yet look where we are, in the exact place that those in the BDS movement had been predicting and warning.
Step one is do whatever is necessary to step back from the precipice of what Trump (+ Christian nationalists) and Netanyahu (+Jewish settlers and fundamentalists) would do. And that means you have to vote for Biden.
FWIW, there is polling which indicates that the majority of college students list the middle east as their least important concern for November.
I think highly online political people are prone to overstating the importance and power of the protests because we want them to matter more than they do. Most people do not vote on foreign policy. Also Macklemore has been irrelevant for years
To add to your point, foreign policy is not up for vote anyway. Presidential administrations come and go, but generally the civil service and diplomatic corps generally pursues stable power relations, for good or ill.
Using (or threatening to use) one's vote as leverage to change policy is as peaceful an opposition as I can imagine.
You don’t have to vote for either candidate.
Perfectly clear message and absolutely correct in my view. Vote for Biden or things will get very much worse both here in the US and in the Middle East. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party, to which I aspire to belong, presently is blinded by their disgust at the way Israel has managed the response to the heinous Hamas attack of Oct 7th, just as the US did in attacking Iraq after 9/11. I think Biden is doing a great job. He has shown support for Israel, but is trying to reign in the clearly right wing authoritarian/apartheid-like present regime in Israel. But there is not much more he can do than try to hold them back. He can’t possibly cut off relations with Israel. Trump would allow Israel to run roughshod over Palestine. He could not care a damn about Palestine as John Ganz rightly says. And that attitude could well lead to a more generalized war as we nearly saw recently with the relatively minor Israel/Iran tussle. There is no question things could get very much worse under Trump. No one should be under the illusion that both Biden and Trump are equally bad. That is the attitude that the elite took in Germany in 1933 when they thought they could “control” Hitler to do their bidding. Trump will just do whatever he wants and the progressives/freedom loving Americans be dammed. If we don’t vote for Biden, if we sit this election out, if we fool ourselves into thinking that it can’t get worse - beware!!! It certainly will under a Trump administration and the worst part of it is that you think demonstrating now is tough? Think again how it might be under Trump facing a National Guard with orders to “shoot when you see the whites of their eyes.” And think again how long it might be before we shake off a Trumpian administration. It will certainly not happen in 2028 - who knows how long it may take before reason again prevails?
The answer is never. History will decide that for us.
One of Trumpism's irresistible appeals is that maga promises to unburden humanity of reason. What people outside of the maga cult fail to appreciate about Trump is that his abject wretchedness as a president, businessman and human being is *his whole appeal.* Trump is an aspirational figure to them because he won the presidency through bigotry, misogyny and openly embracing fascism and political violence. He carries himself like a mafioso. And as the Stormy Daniels testimony in his trial revealed, Trump has lots of sexy sex and degrades women like a manly man should.
Trump gets away with stuff the voters want to get away with. With Trump, we have no need for fact or falsehood because the paradigm has shifted to "it's true because I want it to be true."
This is not the mentality of a civilization of reason. This is revenant totalitarianism. The bad news is that Trump didn't turn the magas into anything. This is what the Magavolkisch were all along, and as Donald's niece Mary says, "he gives people permission to be their worst selves."
People on the left thinking the movement would have more power outside the Democratic Party than within it follows exactly the same logic as Brexiteers thinking the UK would have more power outside the European Union than within it.
It's frustrating to not be in control of everything, but that's fuckin' life man.
Raise hell in your local primaries, raise hell on campus, raise hell in Chicago this summer, then behave yourself and act like an adult in the voting booth in November.
Raising hell in Chicago this summer could, in itself, throw the election to Trump. The Free Palestine movement, in failing to distance itself from Hamas and eliminationist anti-Zionism, has been a disaster—not least for the Palestinians.
Sure, perhaps. The Free Palestine movement bears the burden of both (a) being right about the issue on the merits and (b) conducting its advocacy in an efficacious way.
There are subtleties there and exercising pressure within the Democratic Party in a way that makes your coalition partners hate you is probably shortsighted. But fighting for influence inside the tent is a necessary part of American politics, and that's the path to power for the left.
Supporting Trump out of pique and online edgelordism on the other hand flunks both (a) and (b) above and is a path back into 90's style irrelevance for the left.
I’m concerned that the protesters’ maximalist view is not simply bad strategy, it’s a sincerely held ideological belief, often born out of inexcusable ignorance. It’s certainly a boon to Bibi and his cronies, as well as Hamas and Trump.
Some protestors have a maximalist view and a delusion that Israel could be un-established. Do all of them? I quite sure they don't.
I think many have mobilized because of what is the biggest political emergency of their lives so far, and a desire to stop the mass death of civilians (the killing of civilians being the crime most of the world correctly decried about Oct. 7th). For most of them, those are deaths that have a material connection to their lives (some as Palestinians and/or Muslims, some as Jews, some as US citizens).
I mean, it's not crazy to think that as things stand now in May, there might be tens of thousands of civilians alive right now that will either be dead or alive 8 weeks from now, and their best hope for remaining alive rests with the Biden administration among other entities.
The number ot college students that actually mobilized is pretty small. Something like under ten percent of all college students
No matter what many individual protesters may believe in, the collective voice is maximalist, with a seeming desire to eliminate Israel and Israelis altogether. It certainly goes beyond concern for the lives of innocent Palestinians. I’m a strong supporter in the 2 state solution as the fairest conceivably workable outcome, so this depresses and infuriates me. The fact that it strengthens Trump and the Israeli right makes things incalculably worse.
"No matter what many individual protesters may believe in, the collective voice is maximalist"
What supports that claim?
It's kids. You shoulda heard them back in the Vietnam War days. They managed to be absolutely correct on the big moral issue, and absolutely bonkers on ways and means. They have a keen nose for hypocrisy, but absolutely no idea how humans work.
I'm not sure what this means. Millions of Americans and Vietnamese died pointless deaths because the sophisticated grown-ups won out over the stupid kids. And the conclusion is... the kids fucked up? Maybe some of the wise adults should have taken their cue morally and picked up the strategic slack.
The kids' tactical stupidity (which they viewed as moral purity) meant that the grownups persisted in their killing longer than otherwise. Remember Nixon/Humphrey '68. Were the additional dead Vietnamese really worth the neat-o sloganeering? "Mao, Mao, Mao Tse-Tung/Revolution for the young."
Yes, the grownups deserve greater moral blame. But I'm a consequentialist. The kids made things worse.
Good point
It would be really funny if the Democrats just read the room, realize protesters will try to hijack the moment, and just cancel the convention.
Wholeheartedly agree. It’s clear to me that Hamas felt the need for the kind of spectacular assault that came on Oct 7th after years of Trump and his team doing everything they could to do an end-run around the Palestinians in an attempt to will the entire tangled issue to disappear: the embassy move, the Abraham Accords, the Golan Heights, tacit and explicit approval of unmitigated settlement building. In this sense, despite the immiseration of Gaza, Hamas got exactly what it wanted, and Palestine is back at the forefront of international politics.
As godawful as Biden has been on Palestine, he and his team at LEAST profess to desire a Palestinian state. He’s simply one more in a long line of feckless American leaders who claim to want two states and then proceed to use none of their considerable leverage to bring this about. But does anyone think Netanyahu’s approach to this war would change significantly without American support? Aside from his grotesque bloodlust and open desire for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, he’s got plenty of domestic problems that make the war politically prudent for him.
Anyway, being a single issue American voter this year is just a total moral abdication on so many crucial issues. To hand the vote to Trump over Palestine (my God, just typing that phrase feels totally insane) is to give up on Ukraine (which some may actively want; there’s an unfortunately large Venn diagram crossover of anti Israel and anti Ukraine weirdos), to give up on mitigating climate change, to abandon the pro-Labor policies of this administration, and to welcome the total destruction of the US civil service. Not to mention the economic chaos that will accompany a protectionist trade war. It’s hard not to hector
I'm sorry but this is very weak. You go on and on about how stupid Trump was to hand peace in the middle east to his idiot son in law, but what does it say that Biden dutifully adopted that plan in whole, and is still pursuing it to this very day, tens of thousands of deaths and bombings in multiple countries later?
I agree that Trump _was_ the worst president for Palestine ever, but Biden doubled down on his entire agenda and then added on the facilitation of mass bombing, pillaging, assassination and intentional starvation. Every time Biden makes even the slightest concession to the super-majority opinions of his party's voters (e.g. sanctioning settlers or IDF units) a few weeks later it is quietly rolled back.
I agree that (despite their lockstep policy conformity) the two presidents are characterologically distinct in meaningful ways. But nothing about the last 7 months (or in retrospect his entire career) has shown us that that redounds to Palestinian favor. Biden really has given the Israeli far right everything they want and has evinced vicious anti-Palestinian racism throughout.
As you say, Trump doesn't give a shit about Israelis or Palestinians. I do think he's more anti-Muslim and maybe even anti-Arab in temperament than Biden, but how do you look at the totality of Biden's statements and actions these many months and not conclude that he fucking _hates_ Palestinians? To Biden they are the moral opposite to the muscular Jew that he feels he was put on this earth to buttress. If I were Palestinian, why would I prefer the hateful zealot to the corrupt narcissist?
Biden has had three years of calm and then 7 months of nonstop crisis to distinguish his Palestine policy from his predecessor, and has steadfastly refused to do so. He still has another 6 months to change tack, but this apologia of how he's self-evidently good for Palestine is wholly unearned and at best premature. I would be delighted to be proved wrong, but that has to come from the admin, not pointing at how Trump was different from his predecessors. We get it, we live in hell, but Biden is also here because of Trump.
> I strongly believe a right-wing Israeli government, under the chaos of a second Trump administration, would attempt to go forward with annexation and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and God knows what permanent “solution” for Gaza.
These are things that are happening, right now! Yes, things can get worse, and they did, under Biden! Settlements are expanding, pogroms erupting, and Biden is on record that the war should continue until Hamas ceases to exist.
For the record I do want Biden to win, but I'm under no illusions that it's for Palestine's sake. They will be sacrificed for the sake of our many other crises, because this is a monstrous nation. I guess you feel you're doing your part to make his win possible, but I'm dubious that this argument-via-misdirection is helpful in converting anyone who is on the fence. Should probably either demand a change in policy or change the subject.
I dunno. If Hilary had won 2016 would the situation in Israel & Palestine been materialy different on Oct 6 than it was? I'd argue not, especially since Biden has been following the same Trump policy that looked to sideline the Palestinians in favor of a Saudi Israel deal. I guess my whole thing is for most of this century I've heard vote blue or this really bad thing will happen. I've voted blue & it still has happened, whether it be more war, greater wealth concentration, militarized police, etc. even though democrats have been in power. So I don't think it's unrealistic expectations or whatever, but that the democratic leadership have shown & still show people with nothing but contempt.
1. Most people do not vote based on foreign policy no matter what they say;
2. I think the media and chronically online are likely to overstate the power of the protest movements because they want the movements to have power for good and bad reasons.
3. I am pretty convinced that most people who say that Israel caused them not to vote for Biden would be able to find another reason not to vote for him in November if October 7th never happened;
4. I think we are extrapolating the passions of the campus protesters onto their fellow students too much because we want to. Axios and others have polls which have college students agree with Biden more than the encampment protesters
This is so well done. You can make virtually the same argument about the immigration issue, by the way.
Great piece. Like most of us, I am very online. Biden's done a poor job on Israel-Palestine but pretty solid on most everything else with the Congress he has. Diplomacy on Ukraine was a masterstroke. Looking at the ledger, especially re: labor, he's been the most left president since Truman. We should reward him now that his is the Democratic nominee, if he loses it will send this country right, especially on immigration. I do find myself very annoyed with DSA and the activist left overall these days. I think this whole "Genocide Joe" thing is over the top. If you are Palestinian American, I get it. It really sucks but for everyone else... this shit can get really bad. Fuck the purity politics. We need a popular front (wink) to stop Trump. On the whole Biden has been a good president. It's time to get him over the line. Biden get's us closer to the world we want to see. Just tick the god damned box folks.
It is a very strange world where Ben-Gvnir and Students for Justice in Palestine both want the same thing, a second term for Trump.
The problem I have found with a lot of leftier types is that they also seem to be caught up in stupid rhetoric of the bully pulpit and the President as God-Emperor. It is not just on Israel but you see it for health insurance, student loan debt, court packing, etc. There is a certain kind of low-info lefty that is convinced the President can institute the world’s most generous welfare state with the snap of the fingers. Said person also seems convinced that Israel is a puppet state of the U.S.
I find it impossible to counter or combat this worldview.
I don't understand voting in our system as legitimately being self-expression of anything but one's answers to the questions 'With whom do you trust power the least?'.
Couldn't agree more.
As far as I can tell, Trump and Kushner's policy was less a good faith attempt at a 2-state solution as it was a purposeful snubbing of that, calculated to transition towards a 1-state solution where Bibi takes every opportunity to kill dissenting Palestinians and allow zealots to expand settlements to displace them. The US embassy move to Jerusalem, for example, signaled the US was no longer interested in hearing any Palestinian claims to Jersusalem, which is of course what has held up a 2-state solution for decades.
Biden is not perfect, but way better than the alternative.
Probably a minor point, but I wonder too about Trump-Biden differences on Israel in relation to law. At least not being a criminal is pretty central to Biden’s claim on legitimacy, but what happens if the ICC issues warrants against Israeli leadership? Trump telling the law to go fuck itself is just another Tuesday, but Biden is at least supposed to care about it. The lock the fantasy of Israel as avenging victim holds on the establishment imagination seems unbreakable, but still one wonders if they really want to “officially” side with war criminals.
I don't really have anything to add except that I'll recommend the piece. I'd hope this would some impact on the leftist committed to not voting for Biden, but I unfortunately don't think it will.
I won't be voting for Biden or Trump or RFK Jr. They're peas in a pod regarding Israel-Palestine.
Can things get worse? Absolutely, but I doubt anyone who voted for Biden expected him to be as pig-headed, recalcitrant, and utterly unsympathetic towards Palestinians as he has been. He is a nightmarish caricature of a stubborn politician who thinks he's right and will brook no opposition.
Whoever wins in November is going to be shit awful.