Kyoshi

I feel the same way about the moratorium but I think I'm 5 posts away from getting banned or whatever, so I've been biting my tongue. There's a lack of objectivity in my opinion. But hey ...

Thanks so much!

Hi all, I tend to ghost the board/forum quite a bit so I don't always know where stuff goes. Very sorry about that. But where would put/discuss the New York Times scandal about some of the atrocities Israel claimed happened on 7 October, like the mass r*pes, but have since been debunked? Thanks in advance.

Where is anyone saying that? The point I'm trying to make is that you don't just get Likud and get a more tolerant Israel. Something needs to change about that whole society.

Ah, thanks for this. Gives the numbers meaning.

Likud isn't the problem. Zionism is. This is like blaming Trump for all Republican issues. Israeli politics operate within a spectrum of right wing, far right wing and extreme right wing.

Just because you state your reductive statement is actually complex, doesn't make it complex. Additionally, making a dismissive statement about people not understanding a cause they have tirelessly marched for is also reductive, especially when they articulate precisely why they stand for that cause. If anything, the increased marches indicate increased understanding. I've been pro-Palestine since the early 2000s, it's been an incredibly lonely cause simply because people didn't know. But now they know. The "it's a complex issue" argument has been used, in my experience, by people who simply want to shut down sympathy for Palestinians. The likes of Nancy Pelosi, most recently, who have gone as far as planting the idea that pro-Palestine protesters are so uninformed on this oh-so infinitely complex issue, increased activism has to have been paid for by China or Russia in an effort to destabilise American democracy. It's dishonest and intellectually condescending. It only serves to get people/voters off the hook, because if things are "complex," then who are we to take a stand, who are we to have an opinion, who are we to care? But Sheikh Jarrah happened, people's eyes were opened, now they care about Palestine, period. No misunderstanding required.

This is overly simplistic and reductive. People are protesting an unfolding genocide. And while they're doing that, they're finding out about the Apartheid their government has been supporting, about the tax dollars being sent to another country, whose citizens enjoy such luxuries as subsidised housing, health care, etc. Even if you remove these voters' aspirations for a free Palestine, people are rightfully pissed at their government for seemingly caring more about the welfare of a foreign country's citizens, as opposed to domestic issues. That's one of Trump's key appeals right now. He "stayed out of these endless wars and focused on good ol' America." Isn't the aid that's supposed to go to Ukraine stalled because republicans oppose it? Isn't that one of the reasons they're polling not so terribly? Regardless of the actual reason Republicans do the nonsense they do, they are able to sell it very well to their base, and to pretend that the problem is the river/sea people is reminiscent of Hilary Clinton's red flags, when Dems buried their heads in the sand, because they wanted to believe "America's sexism is our biggest problem." People weren't excited about Biden in 2020, it shouldn't be surprising that people are lower on him now.

I don't know if you're reading any of my posts, and I'm honestly genuinely confused by this response. I have no idea what's happening right now. So I'm just going to move on.

ran, what karaddin said is what i'm agreeing with. why assign hypothetical actions to him when he took a very specific route and articulated his thought process? you might not agree with his politics or actions, but to assign worse "crimes" to him by evoking so-called left wing extremism seems, at best, an attempt at further trivialising what he did and why he did it, if not outright villainising him and his cause.

if i'm reading your posts correctly, you seem to be making false equivalences between typical right and left wing rhetorics.

in other news, 13% of the vote came back as uncommitted. That's 100k voters. Didn't Biden win the state (Michigan) by 150k votes in 2020?

precisely. and given that people are basically just saying "please stop a genocide." this really shouldn't be controversial.

i think I appreciate this response even more because you're not just repeating empty platitudes without explaining (like how people just speak louder and expect you to understand even though they don't explain anything). Scot and Tywin, Let me put it this way: imagine I'm stranded on an island with two other people. The two others both want to be in charge of the food and water, but we hold a vote and Guy #1 wins. We have, let's say, watermelon, orange melon and papaya as our options. If I eat orange melon, it will kill me; if I eat watermelon, I'll get a severe allergic reaction, but I won't die; so the only thing I can eat is the papaya. However, the food guy doesn't want to give me the papaya because he's struck a deal with some melon farmers on the neighbouring island. When I tell him I can't eat melon, he keeps insisting, "but the watermelon won't kill you bro, just eat that." And I'm like, "the allergic reaction is pretty bad bro. Just give me the papaya. I'm pretty hungry." And the food guy is like, "no. And don't even think about rebelling. Remember, the other guys wants to give you the orange melon, which will definitely kill you on the spot ..." ... and we go on like this. That's how "vote blue" sounds right now. No democracy should hold people hostage like this. You can't keep threatening people with a worse fate, and when you get elected, you do the same nonsense as the other guys. Over 400k people marched in DC on (13?) January, hundreds of thousands of people have been marching, but Biden doesn't care. He's not listening. He's listening only to the lobby groups, AIPAC chief among them. That means two very worrying things: once these people are elected, constituents don't matter anymore. Secondly, your democracy has been hijacked by lobby groups. Since the lobby groups' voices matter more, why should people continue to vote for Biden? It has become too clear that his zionist project matters more to him. If you actually listened to any of the people threatening to abstain or vote for independents, you would know that. There's a line they simply won't cross, this is that line. The genocide is a part of it, but more than that, people are waking up to the apartheid, the propaganda, all of which, it turns out, they have been funding with their taxes, regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican sits in the WH.

I give up. I hope the cultural gaps between us don't translate this as an insult, but it seems I have entered a circus and now I'm complaining there are clowns there.

I don't know bro, genocide is a pretty big issue to most. I'm going to say the following with the assumption that you're white and male, in which case, I will hint that perhaps your democracy is not the same democracy experienced by people who do not fall under those demographics. The fact that you can so easily fill pages upon pages with apathetic, empathy-bankrupt rhetoric should tell you how differently you and I experience the world. That's not ad hominem by the way, just the underlying factors that inform our respective politics. "More important" issues to you are too high in the sky for some voters, because they're still on the bare basics, just trying to get the government to stop supporting, arming and funding a genocidal regime that is wiping out their families. But again, that's not important enough for you, because you have "bigger issues" to focus on. That should tell why to some, blue and red are the same.

This is why people don't want to vote for Biden. There are American Arabs and Palestinians who have lost 50+ family members in airstrikes funded and supplied by Biden. So the question becomes, how do you tell someone like that, "But if you don't vote blue, Trump will get in, and he's so much worse." How do you measure worse-ness when the guy in charge right now is pretty much telling you he cares more about the idea of Israel, and not the actual Israel that exists and oppresses millions of people just because they're the "wrong" ethnic group? I understand people not wanting to let Trump in, but honestly, I understand people wanting to get abandon Biden even more. What exactly is the difference between Democrats and Republicans right now? If nothing else, current events seem to be proving Raul Castro correct when he said "America is a one party-state, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them." EDIT: just to say I'm not ranting against you specifically, but you brought up something a lot of the "vote blue no matter what" people are willing to just push aside because it doesn't concern them personally, and they can afford to say, "but look at the bigger picture." The bigger picture just isn't there for some people anymore.

"Boycotts don't work." Not to mention, the USA and UK have been working extra hard to make it illegal to boycott Israel. Mass protests get ignored by the people in power. Not to mention they're deemed inconvenient by the apathetic. The USA just vetoed a third ceasefire resolution, making it impossible for the ICJ measures to be implemented. Donations and aid trucks can't even get into Gaza because Israeli civilians, teenagers included, think Gazans aren't suffering enough. They are throwing rave parties at transition points, blocking the aid from reaching kids who are literally eating animal feed and grass. Even if you donate money online, people in the North of Gaza can't even use it because what is there to buy? Not to mention, gofundme is holding on to people's donations. The UN and other aid agencies have now issued multiple alerts about a developing famine in Gaza. Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera. The stuff on our screens is not normal. But yeah, this poor guy should have just tried to be a little harder to be more "positive" with his actions.

U.S. Air Force Member Sets Self on Fire Outside Israel’s Embassy in D.C. to Protest War in Gaza.

^because politicians have spent decades corrupting political structures to the point that someone like Jeremy Corbyn is "way too crazy oh my gosh who would vote for him?" The American lobby system will never not shock me. There's an interview (I'll try finding the link) in which a historian outlines how literally every American president since Carter IIRC, can be indicted for war crimes. The world is a truly scary place indeed.

^The points you're making highlight one of the biggest problems I have with Western media as a whole. Its all a script and the heroes and villains are decided by the geopolitical interest of the USA, UK, France etc. No nuance whatsoever, unless of course they want us to shut up about issues they don't want us paying too much attention to, in which case we get told, "that's such a complex issue."

Trial against Israel on its apartheid regime/occupation starts.

I really believed he was going to get out one day.

^thank you!

Saw headline of joint ceasefire statement by Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Just wanted to ask if it's real/means anything (from those who live in these countries and understand the propaganda there a little better). I haven't been able to watch the news and I don't have the heart to. It all just feels so hopeless.