TheOubliette @ TheOubliette @lemmy.ml

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Undermining of independent states in the middle east is in the material interest of the US empire. They just disagree internally about how to best go about doing this. A regional war is not directly against US ruling interests unless they think they would lose that fight or if it would shut down the Strait of Hormuz for a long time. The US has not exactly reined in its Israeli attack dog in any meaningful way, which us what they could do and would do if they wanted descalation.

It's not in the interests of the wider civilian population of the planet, or even just those in the US, but those things barely register for empire.

"Why won't you accept our proposal of Bantustans, you ingrates!? You deserve genocide for this"

Mandatory Palestine was long before 1948. Zionist settlers were doing terrorism on the indigenous Palestinians for decades by 1948. And with British support.

Shooting back is not only good, but necessary for survival.

Folks throughout these threads would've been wringing their hands over occupier civilians killed in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, acting like they just can't tell who's right or wrong.

By that logic every single fight has been between bad guys. Abolitionists vs. slavers? Sorry buddy, they both killed noncombatants, they're both just bad guys. Nazis doing genocide vs. partisabs? Sorry buddy, they're both just bad guys.

There are no perfect fights, perfect armies, perfect struggles for liberation. You will have to accept what it takes to fight oppression or force yourself to a mealy-mouthed sidelines from which you declare everyone that isn't passive is always a villain.

Also do not forget that on 10/7 Israeli helicopters were firing on civilians and the state censors have been covering this up. There are attempts to ban Haaretz, a friendly mouthpiece for state interests, because they have been reporting on this.

Israel started the six day war by striking its neighbors. It wanted that war, it knew it had dedicated sponsors that would back them up.

PS Israel, as an apartheid ethnostare premised on settler colonialism, should not exist. The "state" of Israel should be abolished and replaced by a non-apartheid, non-ethnostate that includes all of the people and guarantees a return of stolen homes and land.

When you can't support your own arguments, you could of course just acknowledge this or even just not comment at all instead of lashing out at those who can.

It is particularly disgusting when your arguments serve to obscure genocide.

Every "qualified" person you talked to says the ethnic supremacist apartheid settler colonists are the good guys?

Which Nazi bars do you hang out in?

The 40k number has been steady since early this year. This is not because Israel stopped its mass murder campaign. Instead, it is because they have destroyed the reporting apparatus itself, killing healthcare workers and bureaucrats in a civilian-targeted ethnic cleansing campaign. There is nobody there to do the counts. The hospitals are largely bombed out. Israel targets all aid workers; there is nobody from international orgs to do the counts.

It is not complex at all, it is just genocidal settler colonialism and resistance to it. "Complexity" is just a proxy for being uncomfortable acknowledging this, which is something you should do some introspection on as someone from a German instance. Ever hear of the Holocaust? Of Lebensraum?

Never again means never again for anyone.

In Western fiction, you are taught to support the scrappy underdogs facing oppression from a racist occupying force. You root for them and cheer when they blow up military facilities and you feel for them when they lose their compatriots to oppressor violence. You know very well who the good guys and bad guys are.

But then, in Western media, with a mere change of labeling and some paper-thin propaganda, they will have you believing the opposite. All they need to do is call the freedom fighter resistance "terrorists", say that the occupiers "have a right to defend themselves", and pretend the "conflict" is "complicated" and really about religion. And they will so this even when the occupier ramps up genocide to unignorable levels.

The good guys remain those fighting occupation. This is consistent with a basic understanding of liberation, with nearly everyone's stated beliefs about self-determination, and international law. The bad guys are the ethnic supremacist apartheid settler colonist occupiers doing a genocide as well as their supporters.

The "reasonable person" is an active participant in the genocide. Harris has been lockstep with Biden in his public statements and misleading "ceasefire" rhetoric and has clearly signaled material support for Israeli occupation in no uncertain terms. Harris has not "responded to public opinion", the genocide is very unpopular, as is military support for Israel. She hasn't even done any real pandering, which would be easy and cost her very little. There are a handful of very willing Palestinian PR liberals that will gladly get up on a stage and say, "this is tragic but [both sides rhetoric]". You won't even get that.

It's important to understand that politicians do not care about polling like you might want them to. They only care insofar as it serves their strategy, and their strategy is premised on supporting Israel both to feed their own military industrial complex and to prop up the petrodollar and ensure the US dollar is the world reserve currency. They need Israel to destabilize any independent groups in the region that could jeopardize this by, say, daring to have their own foreign policy or nationalizing their resources or shutting down the Strait of Hormuz in response to unilateral sanctions. Israel is a forward base, an attack dog, for US empire. This is why your politicians will not doing anything for you. This is why you don't even get pandering. This is why they don't follow "the polls" or "public opinion" on this: it does not align with their prior, and greater, commitments to empire, as filtered down through their donors, the government MIC and intelligence bureaucracy, and the party insiders. This is an important lesson to learn, because they will also come at us with positions that they claim are just "following what people want", which is almost always something right wing that serves their own interests. They are not consistent about this, it is just cynical PR strategy to launder an agenda.

Re: being a reasonable person, Harris is a former prosecutor and AG that made a name for herself for unnecessary cruelty in keeping people locked up past when they should have been released and for using technicalities to avoid releasing those with exonerating evidence. As a politician, she is an empty suit, adopting policy planks from other politicians and never fighting for them. "It was a debate!" What you can tell from her, however, is that she is self-interested, opportunistic, and never really breaks the party agenda with any coherent vision of her own. That means going all-in on xenophobic Dem rhetoric, playing coy about trans rights (but she's happy to get photo ops during pride!), and genocide. Expect her, if elected, to not give a shit about you or anyone else and to do exactly what the larger imperialist political bureaucracy wants her to do, all with a smile and an incoherent mealy-mouthed ramble. Expect the trade wars to increase and for yet more US-backed wars and starvation campaigns to ramp up (Yemen has been facing this since Obama).

Harris is in no way less self-interested than Trump, she is just "acceptable" to liberals on a purely aesthetic basis. Her self-interest aligns with the typical liberal idea of what is "okay", which includes members of Congress being mysteriously extremely rich, getting to participate in insider trading, doing a genocide, being "tough on crime", lying regularly, having no consistent principals or honestly-stated political program, having no real track record of delivering or pushing for anything at all except what is already fully in line with the party, punching left, and being politely racist.

Yes thank you for adding this!

UNRWA is the primary mechanism by which Gaza receives aid and runs its own institutions. It is a thorn in Israel's side because they want control over all of that as well and are pissed that Gazans can direct resources where they want.

Nationalism and hard Nation-State borders are a consequence of capitalism, a social development involving tons of idiots. So yes and no.

The entirety of US "democracy" has been oligarchical. Voting was originally restricted to white landowning men and naturally the only people who could "serve" as representatives were the richest people from that group. Everyone has always had to struggle to get anything at all and even then it would be incomplete or weak - like getting the right to vote for your oppressor. The largest liberatory changes required violence and direct action, with the most dramatic being the ability of slavery and the battles of the labor movement. And at no point has the root of oppression (and the oligarchy) been overturned: capitalism.

?

Dems are embracing Trump's wall and harsh immigration stances, tolerating transphobic candidates, and doing this genocide fairly openly.

I think electing more Dems would be the accelerationist position

"How dare you tell me to be against genocide"