12mo ago

Trump win means ‘time has come’ to annex parts of West Bank, Israeli minister says

www.washingtonpost.com /world/2024/11/11/israel-iran-war-news-gaza-palestine-lebanon/

Summary

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich endorsed President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, stating it’s “time” to extend full Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank.

This comes as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu highlighted his alignment with Trump on the “Iranian threat.”

Tensions in Gaza and Lebanon have escalated following recent Israeli airstrikes, with regional leaders gathering in Riyadh to address Israeli actions.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog is set to meet President Biden, though Biden’s influence on Israel may be limited following Trump’s win.

109 comments

bUt hArRiS sUpPoRtS gEnOcIdE
- The Harris campaign made the decision to not break from Biden on Israel, at the cost of a +6 points gain. That's the fault of the campaign's calculations to ignore those voters, take them for granted, and instead run to the right with Liz Cheney and having the most lethal Military.
  I voted for Harris and told others to do the same. It's still on the campaign. Blaming voters is just sowing division when we need unity and solidarity to fight against Fascism.
  
  Split Ticket (July 2024)
  
  New Poll Suggests Gaza Ceasefire and Arms Embargo Would Help Dems with Swing State Voters (Full YouGov Report) (May 2024)
  
  Data For Progress Poll (May 2024)
  
  American Attitudes: Shifting Realities After the Unfolding Genocide in Gaza (Nov 2024)
  
  https://instituteforglobalaffairs.org/2024/09/vox-populi-battlegrounds/#full-report (Nov 2024)
  
  There's no one issue that, independently, could have change the outcome that no other could have as well. Blaming it on just one thing is just as ignorant as blaming it just on voters.
  It's as much on the Harris campaign as the American people who didn't fucking show up, despite all the evidence that it's going to be so much worse with Trump.
  Trying to say "It's anyone's fault but mine" at this stage is pointless, though... because what's done is done. We're fucked. Doing nothing but point fingers only damages us in the long run, because it's that much more energy not spent on fixing it in the future.
- Over 50% of the god damn country voted for a man who has so many major, should-be career ending flaws we don't even need to list them anymore. If he kicked a puppy it wouldn't even make the top 10 worst things he's done. The democrats lost to the stupidest president of all time, a man who's entire economic policy revolves around tariffs that he fundamentally doesn't even understand and who cannot seem to open his mouth without lying.
  ....and you're here dunking on the people trying to oppose America's blatant complicity in genocide. Well, you sure showed them.
  
  while youre busy opposing genocide, you got someone significantly worse elected instead. Well done.
  
  Tbf the 50% that voted for trump aren't here, plain and simple, so that's why you don't see engagement with them.
  The only political engagement you'll see here on Lemmy shifts overwhelmingly left for all parties, so you'll see mostly squabbling between various left factions.
  
  For some reason they still think they can bully people into voting for their guy. This has been thoroughly disproved but still they persist.
- There's a lot of stupidity reflected in these elections.
  
  I've said before (and will say again) that US elections are like our national-scale county fairs: idiots that your normally never see come out of the woodwork.
- Yes she does
- Harris did and does support genocide and if you tolerated that you should do some self-criticism.
Who could have predicted this???
- Me 🧙
Anyone who abstained on grounds of Harris's position on Gaza in my view have blood on their hands in what will not only assuredly he worse for Palestinians under Trump, but also the ongoing attempted genocide in Ukraine by Putin.
They may as well be Trump voters to me and I want nothing to do with them.
- Most of the people spreading that bullshit here were .ml tankies and probably wanted trump elected anyway.
- Worse than Trump voters actually. The vast majority of Trump voters have convinced themselves that what they're doing is good, actually, and that the democrats are evil whereas the people who abstained from voting for Harris literally had a choice of a candidate that campaigned on making their number one issue worse, and one that at least attempted to talk about peace deals and decided to just have no impact whatsoever, condemning hundreds of thousands plus to certain death. They claim to be on the side of ending human suffering when in actuality, they're little piss babies that are upset that their 10% of the population doesn't have complete and total control.
LeopardsAteMyFace.
Unfortunately, this time around, for the Americans pretending to actually give damn on social meda, Gaza will be a parking lot soon.
Just as Trump proclaimed.
- Gaza is a parking lot already.
  All Trump will do is officially move the border line. The full ethnic cleansing of North Gaza is taking place under Biden this very moment.
  
  I think you missed the part where Netanyahu just went out and said the west bank is next.
- People are just getting the consequences of their actions or inaction. My empathy bucket for all of this has broken and I don’t plan on fixing it anymore either.
"We did it, Patrick! We saved Palestine!"
- "Our strategy failed and our candidate lost. Quick! Start mocking people for caring about a genocide before they start getting ideas about blaming us for the mess we caused!"
  
  A shitty campaign does not excuse you from sitting back and allowing fascism to take over. You share in the blame.
  
  "Dems ran a shit out-of-touch campaign, obviously this absolves all of us who were beating the 'Don't vote against the fascist' drum as hard as we could."
  Believe it or not, and I understand this is quite unsettling for people with a simplistic view of the world, blame can be shared over multiple parties. Yes, really!
Wait, why would it make any difference if Donald is elected?
I thought everyone was saying that Biden and Harris were doing nothing about the Palestinians.
- They said they wanted a two state solution. Trump has always been a burn it to the ground guy on that topic.
  Biden is Kamala’s boss, so she toes his line while VP, that’s how the job usually works, unless you’re Cheney.
  So playing the odds at least there’s a chance of survival with Kamala. With Trump it’s just nuked, but without actual nukes.
  But hey, Kamala wasn’t good enough so let’s go with the nukes👍
  Once again, human spite has the force to move mountains.
To those cowards that didn't vote: This is on you, own it you sniveling weasels.
- The democrats can not fail, they can only be failed.
  
  own the cowardice. Dems suck but every non voter has blood on their hands. Ignorance and apathy are not moral principles.
- Absolutely why should death and destruction be only there. Let also the exporter get a taste of their own product.
- Fuck you. Reevaluate your values and if you care so much, you go to the middle east and fight. Otherwise stop virtue signalling.
And that’s why I didn’t feel like I was betraying Palestine by voting for Harris
- This comment was deleted, but the fact that the user "fuckisrael" is the one who made it is deeply funny to me. Guess that one wasn't a Russian spy after all. I don't think they'd be active at this point otherwise.
That finance minister is a Kahanist (Israeli fascist), he doesn't just want to annex parts of the west bank. He wants to annex all of the west bank and Gaza while renaming both. As someone living in Israel I've seen how people are already calling the west bank "Judea and Sumera". He also wants to kill all Arabs and Muslims.
Abstention was already ok with this
- Abstention in Michigan had no faith the Democrats would prevent this.
  
  Cuz they kept saying they wouldn't
Tankies who didn't vote for Harris: We did it! We saved Palestine!
- Trump got more votes than every other party combined.
  
  Cool story
I mean, they aren't wrong, are they?
Hamas is all but defeated, Hezbollah is also on their back foot, and even the model caliphate, Iran, has proven to be almost completely ineffective against Israel's defense system. Europe will make empty gestures about war crimes via the toothless ICC, and America is now totally controlled by the Republicans who never wanted a two-state peace process in the first place.
Israel has never in their short history had a better opportunity to go for the power play and deal with the Palestinians however they please, and under Trump we can expect that they won't get even a little bit of push back from the US, regardless of how harsh and violently they want to play it.
I expect a fucking bloodbath and a full annexation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and possibly parts of southern Lebanon.
But hey, the American people have spoken, and I guess that's what they wanted.
Brought to you in part by the voters too stupid to see the WWarmongering and accelerated genocide and the others who think it's a good thing, prophecy, or that billions won't die because idiot bullies have the bombs.
We appreciate that you come together in support of the War even with having to plan your intertwined economy failing and dragging down others, dollar replaced, rights removals, and climate fails. /s
- "Accelerated genocide" is a term that fits along nicely with "enhanced interrogation." It's good to see the right-wing disinformation machine is still functioning since W. Bush left office. I wonder if Harris picked that gem up as she was courting Dick Cheney's endorsement?
  
  Are you actually suggesting genocide can't get worse once it's already genocide? If so, you know absolutely nothing about genocide.
- The genocide is already accelerated. The Biden-Harris administration already gives Israel all of the material, military, and diplomatic support they need for genociding Gaza and ramping up against the West Bank, the latter being something that has already been happening for months. And people like yourself tolerated that, accepted that from "your" candidates, and fought against those for whom it was correctly a red line.
  In short, both Biden and Harris would rather lose than be anything other than 100% materially supportive of Israel's genocide. They made that choice and y'all backed them up on it. Time to own those decisions, the decision to lose in support of genocide, and do some self-criticism around how what you subscribed to was actually neither particularly strategic nor morally sound.
ITT there's a lot of people unwilling to accept the Democrats didn't prove their case. They didn't convince the Arabs they would be any better for Palestinians. They didn't convince unions they would be any better for them. And they certainly didn't convince anyone leaning truly left to vote for them by seeking Republican endorsements.
Look, I think Harris did the best anyone could with the cards she got dealt. But blaming the voters has never been a winning strategy.
- Why does the blame go for Harris for not convincing people when it was clear to anyone paying attention that Trump was going to be worse?
  This sounds like how people talk after being obviously wrong and not being able to accept being wrong.
  If there are two paths and once says "Doom" and the other says nothing, only a fool picks the marked path. Only a fool who cannot accept responsibility blames the unmarked path for not being clearly marked "NOT Doom"
  When one person says they are going to do bad shit, it's not on the other side to convince you they wont also do bad shit. The person assuming the one not talking who to doing bad shit will do it away because reasons is the problem. There is no one to blame but themselves. They will be a tool until they seize their agency and make an informed decision.
  Stop being a tool.
  
  That's the thing though. In regards to Gaza both paths were marked "Doom". With regards to the left, courting actual Republicans clearly marked both paths "Conservative".
  Your analogy depends on your point of view being everyone's point of view. This is a fundamental failing of the democrats this year. They again acted like they were the only obvious choice and nobody could possibly have a legitimate opinion otherwise.
  If you ignore voters and let party elders call them Russian agents then it's not exactly rocket science that they aren't going to vote for you.
- There were two paths. One path was the dems, who I'll be the first to admit, not doing a great job with Gaza. The other, was Trump, who is buddies with Israel's prime minister to a first name basis, moved the embassy to Jerusalem specifically in support for Israel over all others and has proven to have nothing but disdain for anyone else in the region.
  I'm sure the people in Gaza hearing the guy who is actively excited about their deaths really appreciate those who didn't vote "showing the dems" to swap out people at least attempting peace talks.
  And frankly not voting to prove a point is like fucking for virginity. All you do is tell the politicians that have an interest against you they don't have to worry about you, you won't vote against them either.
  
  None of that makes sense. If the Dems are just greenlighting everything anyways, what's the point for someone who cares about Gaza?
  If the Dems are taking victory laps on a failed economy, what's the point for a working class family?
  If the Dems are actively courting the conservative family members of war criminals who lied to us to kill 4,000 Americans, what's the point for antiwar activists?
  There is not two paths when the Democrats are acting like this.
- I'm sorry was Richard Spencer on the ballot? How far does this transitive property go? Is the entire family of the voter now Nazis too? After all they have to sit at the table with the person and we know what you all say about sitting at tables with Nazis.
  This is a shit attempt at moral blackmail.
Fucking war criminals
Israel is already controlling the West bank directly with settlements and indirectly with the Palestinians authority who arrest resistance leaders but do nothing to defend Palestinians
And notice how all the screeching about genocide has gone silent? Proves that they never actually cared.
My heart is broken for Palistine. While people were giving support day after day others were undermining them, lending support to a genocide.
I remember commenting a couple months back on one of those "Arab-Americans not voting for Harris" posts, something along the lines of "it's your vote, but I think that you're going to find that you'd rather have Harris than Trump" and listing some past policy moves like the embassy in Jerusalem, and then someone downvoting and responding something along the lines of "identical candidates".
- And I think you will find that there has been no material difference in what "Israel" is actually doing. They've been ramping up occupation and violence in the West Bank for months, going in exactly this direction already. They murdered an American activist in the West Bank as part of this and swept it under the rug using the pretense of an "investigation", remember? The West Bank is already occupied, it is already split into isolated districts, travel is already highly restricted, there are racist curfews for those who must commute to work in Israel, forced through several checkpoints and fearing jail for any delays, giving themselves 3 hour buffers for travel tine, and their government is compradors that work with the IOF to arrest and jail them and out down resistance movements.
  The main difference between Dems and GOP on Israel is that Dems feign empathy and concern while Republicans are openly racist. But materially the outcomes are actually very similar, with Dems often being worse because they can more effectively count on your lack of dissent and in coordinating with Europe.
  You might remember that there has been a US-backed genocide in Gaza for over a year, under a Dem, and they were willing to lose the election rather than stop supporting genocide.

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