Thousands took to the streets across Israel Saturday night to call for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ouster and new elections, in demonstrations spanning from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to Haifa and Caesarea in the north and Be'er Sheva in the south.
At a demonstration in front of the President's Residence in Jerusalem, Yosef Angel, bereaved father and grandfather of 17-year-old Ofir Angel, who was freed from Hamas captivity in Gaza, said "You stand at the head, and are responsible for the October 7 holocaust. You are trying to escape responsibility and look for someone else to blame, shame on you."
I appreciate the sentiment, but calling October 7th a "holocaust" causes more problems than it solves. The Israeli propaganda machine has been active as soon as the attack started to make Hamas look worse than they already are (which is still pretty bad to be fair, but not "Holocaust" bad).
Thanks to Israel using people who weren't qualified for the job the numbers will never come to light, but let's not forget that a significant number of IDF civilians were killed by the IDF, not Hamas.
The Palestinian movement has failed to adequately separate itself from Hamas. No real denouncements of Hamas. You have people cosplaying as Hamas genocidal psychopaths at Pro-Palestine rallies.
Now the tactic seems to be to literally "both sides" genocide. Claim that Israel is committing genocide to provide cover for the genocide Hamas committed.
The old fascist tactic of accusing the other side of the things you're guilty of.
What's happening now is a war. A war that was started by the genocide Hamas committed. Given how Hamas has embedded itself into the civilian population, given that Hamas doesn't wear uniforms which would allow the IDF to distinguish combatants from civilians, given Hamas has made zero effort to protect the civilian population, building bunkers only for themselves... yeah it's a war with a lot of civilian casualties. A war Hamas started. A war Hamas created the conditions in which there would be high civilians casualties.
Anyone that's cracked open a history book knows what this is. People with foreign policy experience knows what's up.
But people reading the boosted Hamas propaganda have read the same lies over and over again enough times that they believe it.
Then scream on the internet about "why is Joe Biden allowing this to happen?"
It's because he's not in the information silo you're in. Hamas committed genocide. No matter how much people want to deny it, no matter all the "both sides" fascist narratives are spread on the internet, the truth is that Hamas committed genocide. Hamas started the war. Hamas set up the conditions for the war. As Hamas is being contained, the civilian casualties are dropping. Civilian casualties happen in Israel when Hamas is present. Civilian casualties also happen in Gaza when Hamas is present. Israel is not committing genocide because if that were the case, civilian casualties would increase where Hamas isn't present to protect them. But the opposite is happening. Civilian casualties are decreasing as Israel takes control of Gaza from Hamas.
You've been lied to. It's easier to convince someone of a lie than it is to convince them they've been lied to. It's not just the MAGAs that need deprogramming. There's a lot of people that fell for Hamas propaganda.
Yowza! That's a lot of easily disproven misinformation. You do realize you're on the Internet, right? You can actually look up the things you're claiming and verify they're not true.
Hi. I have combat experience and foreign policy experience.
You're full of shit. This war is not to international standards. Israel has repeatedly failed to hold it's troops accountable for documented, credible accusations, of war crimes. That alone from a professional army is shocking. But on the policy side the IDF has a choice they refuse to make. They can let refugees out, deliver food aid themselves, or let the UN deliver food aid. They have decided to force people to remain in the combat zone and starve.
This is all well documented. It's not propaganda. And it is the conduct of a systemic genocide.
It seems like Israelis who disagree with Likud are completely in the propaganda. The "Holocaust" language seems to be their propaganda. To be fair, it was a massive attack that impacted pretty much every Israeli. With something that personal, it's easy to turn around and use the language of the people who are ultimately responsible for this attack in the first place.
One state solution. No country gets to dress up in a liberal democracy wig while sporting ethno state raybands. Apartheid states don't get to exist in a functioning democracy.
The answer is a federal system consisting of at least 3 separate political institutions but nobody who's participating in this conversation anymore really cares about solving the problem..
Obviously plenty of people on social media have been shitting on Biden for a while now, perhaps understandably.
But this is why he has to play a delicate and balanced role. He obviously hates Netenyahu and dislikes Israel's government, but he can't push too hard, because it would only help Netenyahu cling on to power a while longer. For example:
So although he initially publicly backed Israel 100%, the reason he's now being relatively muted in his criticism of their government, is almost certainly because he wants Netenyahu gone or wants Netenyahu to be forced to create a new coalition with more moderate parties. You know, get rid of those smug thunder cunts Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.
Meanwhile, the US is clearly pushing the two state solution hard behind the scenes. Don't think it's an accident that little America's David Cameron said the UK might recognise Palestine and apparently the US is considering it too, all while doing an intensive tour of the middle-east and negotiating with Israel's neighbours for normalisation.
Is it obvious he hates them? Hasn't he been vocally very supportive up until basically election season started? Even for several months while the IDF had been bombing civilians and killing non-combatants indiscriminately he did little more than tell Bibo that he had to be a bit more discrete about his mass-murder while giving them the means to do so.
Words are just that, words. His actions say he supports Israel 100%.
You're wrong. Biden fucking hates the guy (and his government). Democrats do too. Why would they like him? Netanyahu has tied Israel extremely closely and nearly solely to the Republican party. He basically campaigned for Trump. After Biden criticized Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Netanyahu timed the announcement of new settlements to Biden's arrival in Israel just to humiliate him. He did the same thing just hours before his inauguration.
They fought publicly last year with Biden saying that Israel "cannot continue down this road" (about judicial overhaul) with an Israeli diplomat saying that "As long as he is Israel’s prime minister, things are likely to deteriorate.” There have been numerous reports that they have barely spoken and that things have been tense when they have. Biden is reported to have ended that conversation with the never-affectionate "this conversation is over."
They have like 15 years of bad blood between them, personally and politically.
Biden understands that Netanyahu’s position is a precarious one. His governing coalition received just 48.4 percent of the vote, and took power only because of a quirk of the Israeli electoral system. The coalition relies on an alliance of unpopular far-right parties to stay afloat, whom Netanyahu must appease to remain in office. Biden has exploited this weakness and repeatedly poked at it. Rather than directly confronting Netanyahu, he has called out his extremist partners and in this way heightened the contradictions within Netanyahu’s coalition, undermining its stability and gradually eroding its support in the polls. In July, Biden told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that Netanyahu’s government has “the most extremist members of cabinets that I’ve seen” in Israel ... This was Biden’s approach in action: criticizing Israel during wartime in front of a pro-Israel crowd, and doing so in a way that nonetheless denied Netanyahu any opening. As long as it’s Biden versus Ben-Gvir, rather than Biden versus Bibi, the president holds the upper hand. ... Biden has brought the same strategy to bear on the issue of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, which has accelerated under the cover of Israel’s campaign in Gaza. Netanyahu’s coalition is unable to clamp down on these extremists and their terrorism because it is beholden to these extremists. But most Israelis have no desire to mortgage the security of Israel and its indispensable relationship to the United States in favor of some far-flung hilltop settlers in West Bank regions that few Israelis could locate on a map. Knowing this, Biden has begun unrolling a series of unilateral measures intended to raise the price of settler violence and pit Netanyahu and his allies against the Israeli public.
Proper nasty politics, keep your enemies closer, and backstabbing basically.
People think Biden's this old incompetent coot, but there's a reason he's been around for decades. He's a piece of work, for better or for worse, and knows how the game is played.
No one forced him to circumvent congress twice to support Netanyahu's genocide. No one was clamoring for it, and no one would have blamed him if he hadn't.
"Trust us, we're totally doing what you want, silently and invisibly, behind the scenes"
Oh no they used the word "Holocaust". The German government will come down on them with their full force for "relativising" the holocaust. These antisemitic jews.
Yes, because by doing so you fail to see the big picture.
No, it's not "they started it" like a lot of Israeli's like to say, but it's the fact that Israel itself is being taken over by fascists, fundumentalists, billionaires and Netanyahu family.
The Israeli people were fighting them the last year trying to prevent the country from becoming a dictatorship.
Oh, and finish with a childish remark...
Your comment just copy past a random article, throws a "what about" unrelated to the topic and paint all the Israelis in the same color.
The Israeli people were fighting them the last year trying to prevent the country from becoming a dictatorship.
The bulk of the Israeli public was perfectly happy with the treatment of their Palestinian neighbors up until this point. Settlers on the border shooting into Palestinian lands, attacking Palestinian farmers, bulldozing homes, and setting fire to groves is nothing new. It goes straight back to the Nakba of '48.
What has the Ashkenazi branch of the population in a lather is the threat of Sephardics and Mizrahis increasingly dominating the Parliament and the various state agencies. The country has always been a military dictatorship from the perspective of the Arabs. Only recently have the more Western and secularized Jewish settlers found themselves exposed to the iron fist of Israeli rule.