People are wising up to the nonsense of our long-standing “Israel can do no wrong and we should give them money” policy. It never made sense to subsidize a country that was not poor and really had zero strategic benefit for us. It made even less sense when that country simply could not bring itself to do what needed to be done with the large minority population that was already living on the land they occupied—ie, deoccupy that land so it can become an independent state, or absorb it with full citizenship rights for everyone. This also empowered Israeli extremists who wanted ethnic cleansing. Bad as this was, it was incomprehensible that the U.S. would own the results of this by subsidizing it all and providing diplomatic cover.
A lot of pols on both sides of the aisle permitted this idiotic status quo out of fear that they’d look antisemitic if they veered from it, never mind how stupid it is (imagine not wanting to go to war with Germany out of fear that it’d make you seem bigoted towards German Americans). Fortunately most Jews don’t buy that crap, and it’s good that so many are speaking out as it emboldens more people to question whether we want to let this continue to the natural result of wiping out a million Arabs and having their blood on American hands.
You can support the people of a country and still disavow their leaders. I haven’t specifically asked my friends in Tel Aviv how they feel about this war but I’m sure a lot are not happy. Remember how Bibi tried to get rid of their courts and the huge uproar over that. Plus the hard liners are huge zealots much like our evangelicals. They are pretty much a secular society but being high jacked as well by an ultra religious group.
Netanyahu is a fucking criminal, full stop. He is vulnerable and he should be targeted for parliamentary removal. If AIPAC had any sense they would be funding the political resistance to his continued corrupt administration.
“According to data from the Israel Democracy Institute, only 40% of the overall Israeli public trusts Netanyahu. This breaks down to 46% among Jewish Israelis and just 10% among Arab Israelis.”
Why should any American fear his accusations of antisemitism when he faces such miserable support among his own people?
Good point about “spoiled rich kid love.” This will be interesting to see. Especially if Netanyahu does not get reelected this coming October.
A minor tech thing. I have my browser (Firefox) set up to block third-party cookies. (Mozilla now calls this setting "Enhanced Tracking Protection".) One consequence of this is that certain embeds are suppressed, as here, with the Instagram clip from Pod Save America. Usually there is some hint that this has happened, but in this case, there was just a big blank space, almost an entire full screen in height.
NBD, of course. I just scrolled a bit farther. But for future reference, you may want to keep this in mind, and consider some way of letting readers know what's going on. For example, back in the bloggy days, when many people blocked YouTube embeds, I would augment every embedded clip with an "[alt video link]" that went to the source of the embed, when clicked.
[ETA] I should acknowledge that there are probably not huge numbers of readers who would have the same experience here, given Firefox's paltry market share AND my suspicion that this setting is not enabled for many, if not most, Firefox users.
A politician's morals usually take a backseat to money. And a lot of important people make a lot of money on the weapons we ship to Israel.
I suspect the plan is likely to blame the bad PR on Bibi and the new regime will be a bit quieter about the ethnic cleansing and genocide so politicians can get back to making sure their rich donors get paid and Israel still gets its offensive weapons.
Now, I'm not saying the Democratic party is the same as the GOP. The worst Democrats will generally listen to consultants and focus groups showing that there is bad PR and do something, however inadequate, to address the issue upsetting people. The GOP will say "Fuck you. We dare you to vote Democrat, white Evangelicals."
I mean, neither of them are going to get out of their primaries because all you have to do is say the magic acronym AIPAC. It is one of the Pretty Words What Democrats Like. But especially Rahm Emanuel if he actually is seriously running for something. The party as a while has moved leftward as part of a trend for 20 years.
I don't care who Israel has as its leader, I want our country to stop giving them money and weapons to commit genocide. Why are they considered our ally? They have free healthcare and education for their people on our dime. Stevens is over 20 million deep in AIPAC money, but sure Jan, she's against Israel now. Rahm was talking about a 23 state solution, they are clowns who will say whatever to get power.
What 2026 election? You mean the shell of an election that the Republicans are destroying piece by piece, as I noted months and months ago. It's still only July. There are four months left to get ICE to any likely close election site; to call for an emergency due to, I don't know, somebody 's cat is not eating; naming an insurrection; shutting down all polling places except those that can be monitored and people intimidated; getting rid of more non-partisan staff; more nonsense related to 2020. I'm sure the project 2025 group and Miller can think of additional things. Oh, and about the article. Right wing governments - and the large plurality that support them - are the problem everywhere. No anti-semitism needed. And this from an old American Jew.
A couple of things struck me as I read this, and the first is that calculating what you think about something based on voter polls is not exactly immoral, but it *is* disingenuous. I prefer to vote for people who saw it correctly the first time around and weren't afraid to say so (although I am aware that choice is not always available). Sincerely changing one's mind as an issue evolves is also acceptable. Israel is only one issue in a myriad of them right now, but that it has taken two and a half years of genocide to get some of these guys to come around to the fact that the Israeli government has no divine claim to US support means none of them are going to be serious contenders for higher office going forward. Just ask Hillary Clinton how that works out even years later.
The second is, MAGA learned well the lessons of pre emptively shutting down any serious conversation of a charged issue by accusing their detractors of bad faith-in this case anti semitism-directly from the activists. I often thought the default tactic of simply yelling that anyone who opposes, say, affirmative action, is a gutter racist did more harm than good to the discourse (back when we had discourse). Shoe is on the other foot now, and a lot of Dems and Dem adjacent are flustered and furious at the accusation when the issue they oppose has nothing to do with hating Jewish people themselves. It's time for all of us to stop it and look more closely at the issues before we start hurling accusations. I know that's unlikely to happen since everyone is so reactionary now, but a girl can dream.
Starting a war usually increases support for the government, as a stand in for the country. Bush got that after 9/11, Netanyahu after 10/7. It's interesting that Trump, with his touch of merde, has only worsened Americans’ opinion of his maladministration with his not-a-war war with Iran. Since the war is unpopular and our co-combatant is Israel, it’s not a difficult political decision for Democrats to speak out against the Israeli government.
People are wising up to the nonsense of our long-standing “Israel can do no wrong and we should give them money” policy. It never made sense to subsidize a country that was not poor and really had zero strategic benefit for us. It made even less sense when that country simply could not bring itself to do what needed to be done with the large minority population that was already living on the land they occupied—ie, deoccupy that land so it can become an independent state, or absorb it with full citizenship rights for everyone. This also empowered Israeli extremists who wanted ethnic cleansing. Bad as this was, it was incomprehensible that the U.S. would own the results of this by subsidizing it all and providing diplomatic cover.
A lot of pols on both sides of the aisle permitted this idiotic status quo out of fear that they’d look antisemitic if they veered from it, never mind how stupid it is (imagine not wanting to go to war with Germany out of fear that it’d make you seem bigoted towards German Americans). Fortunately most Jews don’t buy that crap, and it’s good that so many are speaking out as it emboldens more people to question whether we want to let this continue to the natural result of wiping out a million Arabs and having their blood on American hands.
You can support the people of a country and still disavow their leaders. I haven’t specifically asked my friends in Tel Aviv how they feel about this war but I’m sure a lot are not happy. Remember how Bibi tried to get rid of their courts and the huge uproar over that. Plus the hard liners are huge zealots much like our evangelicals. They are pretty much a secular society but being high jacked as well by an ultra religious group.
We're still sending bulldozers to wreck Palestinian towns for illegal settlements, soooooo....
I found this on the BBC website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-33fccfbe-abcc-4af1-bdd2-632b2787cf59
So. Wrong.
Netanyahu is a fucking criminal, full stop. He is vulnerable and he should be targeted for parliamentary removal. If AIPAC had any sense they would be funding the political resistance to his continued corrupt administration.
“According to data from the Israel Democracy Institute, only 40% of the overall Israeli public trusts Netanyahu. This breaks down to 46% among Jewish Israelis and just 10% among Arab Israelis.”
Why should any American fear his accusations of antisemitism when he faces such miserable support among his own people?
Good point about “spoiled rich kid love.” This will be interesting to see. Especially if Netanyahu does not get reelected this coming October.
A minor tech thing. I have my browser (Firefox) set up to block third-party cookies. (Mozilla now calls this setting "Enhanced Tracking Protection".) One consequence of this is that certain embeds are suppressed, as here, with the Instagram clip from Pod Save America. Usually there is some hint that this has happened, but in this case, there was just a big blank space, almost an entire full screen in height.
NBD, of course. I just scrolled a bit farther. But for future reference, you may want to keep this in mind, and consider some way of letting readers know what's going on. For example, back in the bloggy days, when many people blocked YouTube embeds, I would augment every embedded clip with an "[alt video link]" that went to the source of the embed, when clicked.
[ETA] I should acknowledge that there are probably not huge numbers of readers who would have the same experience here, given Firefox's paltry market share AND my suspicion that this setting is not enabled for many, if not most, Firefox users.
A politician's morals usually take a backseat to money. And a lot of important people make a lot of money on the weapons we ship to Israel.
I suspect the plan is likely to blame the bad PR on Bibi and the new regime will be a bit quieter about the ethnic cleansing and genocide so politicians can get back to making sure their rich donors get paid and Israel still gets its offensive weapons.
Now, I'm not saying the Democratic party is the same as the GOP. The worst Democrats will generally listen to consultants and focus groups showing that there is bad PR and do something, however inadequate, to address the issue upsetting people. The GOP will say "Fuck you. We dare you to vote Democrat, white Evangelicals."
I mean, neither of them are going to get out of their primaries because all you have to do is say the magic acronym AIPAC. It is one of the Pretty Words What Democrats Like. But especially Rahm Emanuel if he actually is seriously running for something. The party as a while has moved leftward as part of a trend for 20 years.
I haven't seen the Vichy Dems do anything, really.
And by choosing to do nothing, they're helping butcher people at home and abroad, same as it ever was.
I don't care who Israel has as its leader, I want our country to stop giving them money and weapons to commit genocide. Why are they considered our ally? They have free healthcare and education for their people on our dime. Stevens is over 20 million deep in AIPAC money, but sure Jan, she's against Israel now. Rahm was talking about a 23 state solution, they are clowns who will say whatever to get power.
Agree 100%
What 2026 election? You mean the shell of an election that the Republicans are destroying piece by piece, as I noted months and months ago. It's still only July. There are four months left to get ICE to any likely close election site; to call for an emergency due to, I don't know, somebody 's cat is not eating; naming an insurrection; shutting down all polling places except those that can be monitored and people intimidated; getting rid of more non-partisan staff; more nonsense related to 2020. I'm sure the project 2025 group and Miller can think of additional things. Oh, and about the article. Right wing governments - and the large plurality that support them - are the problem everywhere. No anti-semitism needed. And this from an old American Jew.
A couple of things struck me as I read this, and the first is that calculating what you think about something based on voter polls is not exactly immoral, but it *is* disingenuous. I prefer to vote for people who saw it correctly the first time around and weren't afraid to say so (although I am aware that choice is not always available). Sincerely changing one's mind as an issue evolves is also acceptable. Israel is only one issue in a myriad of them right now, but that it has taken two and a half years of genocide to get some of these guys to come around to the fact that the Israeli government has no divine claim to US support means none of them are going to be serious contenders for higher office going forward. Just ask Hillary Clinton how that works out even years later.
The second is, MAGA learned well the lessons of pre emptively shutting down any serious conversation of a charged issue by accusing their detractors of bad faith-in this case anti semitism-directly from the activists. I often thought the default tactic of simply yelling that anyone who opposes, say, affirmative action, is a gutter racist did more harm than good to the discourse (back when we had discourse). Shoe is on the other foot now, and a lot of Dems and Dem adjacent are flustered and furious at the accusation when the issue they oppose has nothing to do with hating Jewish people themselves. It's time for all of us to stop it and look more closely at the issues before we start hurling accusations. I know that's unlikely to happen since everyone is so reactionary now, but a girl can dream.
Starting a war usually increases support for the government, as a stand in for the country. Bush got that after 9/11, Netanyahu after 10/7. It's interesting that Trump, with his touch of merde, has only worsened Americans’ opinion of his maladministration with his not-a-war war with Iran. Since the war is unpopular and our co-combatant is Israel, it’s not a difficult political decision for Democrats to speak out against the Israeli government.