Rights advocates in the United States are urging President Joe Biden to end his administration’s “complicity” in Israeli rights abuses after key members of Israel’s government backed the idea of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza.
Far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich said this week that Israel should “encourage emigration” from the coastal enclave, home to an estimated 2.3 million Palestinians.
“If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not two million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after [the war ends] will be totally different,” Smotrich said on Sunday, calling for the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians.
A day later, Ben-Gvir, who oversees national security, made a similar appeal, saying it was “a correct, just, moral and humane solution”, Israeli media outlets reported.
Calm down, everyone! Biden is already acting. He’s sending weapons to Israel as fast as he can.
But this is fine because Trump would send them even faster and make the children even more dead. All hail the glorious two party system.
The Abraham Accords is often cited as an escalation towards the situation we are now in that it tried to politically isolate Hamas: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Accords
Maybe the orange man wouldn’t make a difference on the arms front, but he is really good at planting seeds for conflict.
This is honestly what defeating an insurrection should feel like. Comparing obvious differences in administration and policy. Yep, i only see escalation and incitement on the alternative side of the coin. ““Set up nukes outside of Iran?”” yeah we dodged a huge bullet.
Biden has the policy of expanding the shameful Abraham Accords
Were you asleep from 2015 to 2020? He’d definitely be at least as bad on this issue, and vastly worse on every other one.
Yeah I know. Perhaps you missed my point
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Source? Last I heard, trump got us OUT of a war that Biden oversaw the continuance of for 8 years. How is trump somehow a warmonger now? Is there a potential grift available for him to do or something?
This is just something “Vote blue no matter who” types imply when they talk about this. I wasn’t actually making this point as such.
trump got us OUT of a war that Biden oversaw the continuance of for 8 years
Lol how did that go?
For this issue, there’s the stuff he did during his term as mentioned above, and as usual quoting him is enough:
“So you have a war that’s going on, and you’re probably going to have to let this play out,” Trump told Univision. “You’re probably going to have to let it play out because a lot of people are dying.”
“There is no hatred like the Palestinian hatred of Israel and Jewish people. And probably the other way around also, I don’t know. You know, it’s not as obvious, but probably that’s it too. So sometimes you have to let things play out and you have to see where it ends,” he added, calling what was taking place in Gaza “unbelievable.”
So you’re right. Since a lot of people are dying he thinks we should “let it play out,” and also incidentally said he wouldn’t allow Gazan refugees in the US and previously released a “peace plan” that matched Netanyahu’s.
So my source is the continued, ill-considered and idiotic behaviour of this egotistical man child and the words that spew from his mouth on a daily basis. The fact that this is the best the republicans can do is truly embarrassing
I too would also like to mention the man paints his face orange and like… you all just ok with that. Wtf people?
I don’t have to fuck him, why should I care?
Bitch if your coworker started showing up with orange face paint everyday you would talk so much shit. Don’t lie.
We do talk shit. Have you seen a late show in the last 8 years? But it’s pretty irrelevant to being president, so it’d be dumb to focus 9n that rather than the 30k other things.
I have no illusions as to him being a good president. But the Israel issue is significant enough that he’s worth it. And literally just saying he would stop interfering in it makes him a MAJOR upgrade over the current genocider-in-chief.
Stop interfering = let the genocide continue. So no I wouldn’t call it a major upgrade even on this issue. It’s going from being the guy cheering for the bully to one silently standing by as he stomps on a defenceless victim’s head.
And for every other issue Trump is anywhere from embarrassingly stupid to outright scary. Much worse than Biden.
The problem is the two party system, because both of these options are ultimately fucking dog shit.
I am perfectly fine with my country doing nothing more than providing military support only as requested by the rest of the UN, and otherwise doing nothing. Ideally that would be America’s role in every armed conflict. The reason they’re even able to do a genocide is having American backup and weapons. End that and the genocide is over. Iran could flatten Israel in a day if Israel didn’t have the threat of the US military behind them.
There is no other issue. America is helping to commit a genocide. Tax rates, or hell even attempted coups, mean nothing in comparison.
Yeah fair enough. I feel like they could still do a lot of damage if the US ended support, but I totally get your perspective and kind of agree actually.
America sliding into fascism is not quite worth it for me though, especially because I don’t trust Trump to remain consistent on this issue either. Biden needs to be forcefully pushed to change tack, I guess by the poll numbers and internal protests
The Doha accords were a gift to the Taliban, they knew the US wanted out, Trump said we wanted out, and he set the stage for an untenable self-governance in Afghanistan
Biden deserves plenty of blame for how the inevitable went down and not ensuring interpreters/collaborators were evacuated , but Trump absolutely set up the fall of Afghanistan. The Afghan papers made clear the ANA were not a viable force, but Biden should have had contingencies ready
He did say, loud and proud, that he’s zionist…
Sauce for the lazy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jov9jxRecFc
Nothing out of the ordinary here. Just the head police officer of Israel suggesting actual ethnic cleansing in a reasonable tone.
Nope definitely not an evil government.
I don’t understand where the people taking these statements seriously (either to support them or to oppose them) imagine that the Palestinians could possibly go from Gaza. Egypt won’t take them. That means they’re not going anywhere.
Nobody would take the Jews in the 1930’s either. This is part of the playbook.
They’ll eventually just push them into Egypt. It doesn’t matter that Egypt doesn’t want them. It matters more that Egypt probably won’t start shooting over it. And if they do they’ll be labelled anti-semites anyway and Israel will take the Sinai or something.
Israel can’t take the Sinai. There’s a peacekeeping force there specifically to prevent such a thing…
And yeah. Yeah they’re just going to lean on MFO Sinai to oversee refugee camps aren’t they.
I’d say the Israelis couldn’t attack American troops and maintain their support but uhhh they already managed that some decades ago.
I don’t think the point of genocide is for them to leave.
Anywhere else… I think the point is to say that they should’ve figured it out. They had warning and opportunity to leave, even when they didn’t. The Nazis played the same strategy.
The people downvoting you need a history lesson. Hitler used the same rhetoric to justify the Holocaust.
Honestly, no one takes either of those racist idiots seriously. They’re not serious people and this isn’t a serious plan. They’re both despised in Israel and, thankfully, neither really have any influence.
So the minister of finance and minister of national security aren’t influential in any ways in a country that gets billions of dollars from the USA and uses it to fund their national war effort?
Are you waiting for other people in their govt to say something about flattening Gaza? Some minor politicians have said that
The agriculture minister said this would be a second Nakba, that event where the Israelis took homes and made prisoners go through their own abandoned(stolen) homes taking books, furniture, and their whole cultural history for the Israeli to take as spoils of war.
Exactly this. Either Netanyahu controls the Likud-coalition and this is the aligned message of displacement/ethnic cleansing, or he dismisses these ministers and publicly refutes these statements, or he doesn’t have control and should immediately hold elections to secure a real coalition or majority. But that risks jail for Netanyahu, and his actions so far have openly spoken of cowardice in the face of the legal repercussions.
Because otherwise this kind of rhetoric is going straight into the ICJ evidence file for SA’s genocide complaint that Israel is contesting. Protestations of ‘blood libel’ don’t drown out cabinet ministers openly calling for ethnic cleansing going unpunished.
As odd as it may seem: yes, they aren’t influential in directing the war. They have those positions because Netanyahu promised them for supporting his coalition, not because they were “earned” or because they’re ideologically aligned. It’s a marriage of convenience and outside of Netanyahu’s deal to desperately cling to power, these two are far-right kooks from fringe parties. It doesn’t give them real legitimacy. Netayahu’s coalition deal was an enormous controversy even outside of Israel. A big reason they formed the emergency government was to keep extremely unserious clowns like these away from decision-making by bringing in grown-ups. They are both strongly disliked and would be crushed back into obscurity in an election.
This article presents their statements as something new and they aren’t. Both of these fucking morons routinely suggest horrific shit like expelling Arabs from Israel. Ben-Gvir was convicted in Israel of racist incitement against Arabs decades ago. A former head of Shin Bet once referred to Smotrich as a “Jewish terrorist.” They are both settler extremists and known quantites; it would be stranger if they weren’t spouting racist, extremist bullshit. They are not representative of the broader government. Netanyahu didn’t have to agree to a cabinet made up of his political enemies; even that far-right ghoul knows these people are clowns. Given all that, I don’t think there’s a compelling reason to believe that they’d be the ones to announce Israeli policy.
Are you waiting for other people in their govt to say something about flattening Gaza?
I’m waiting for someone who actually matters. These dipshits do not. I mean, really, none of the people currently in power are going to be around after this conflict anyway, so I’m more concerned with what Gantz is saying than with Netanyahu’s petulant tantrums.
Now apply the same standard to the enemies of Israel. Part of the dehumanization that goes on with Israeli apartheid and occupation is that while Israeli politics is accepted as complicated and nuanced, with analysis like the one you offer here, the politics of the other side(s) is always considered morally unambiguous. Hamas: a terrorist monolith. Fatah: supports a terrorist fund. Hezbollah: Iranian stooges.
If we apply the same absolutist moral standard to Israel, the nuance you present simply doesn’t matter: if kahanist extremists are in government, the entire state is compromised, and Israel needs to be militarily defeated so that peace can exist.
If we allow for nuance also for Israel’s enemies then a whole bunch of racist assumptions go away. The conflict is no longer a fight between the only democracy in the ME and the forces of Sauron. It’s a political land dispute that is resolvable. But you have to talk to the political forces you’ve labelled terrorists, accept that they have valid and legitimate aspirations and concerns (just like the Israelis do) and negotiate in good faith.
Yes! I completely agree with you. I’m not totally sure if you’re saying that ‘people should’ apply that same standard or that I’m not applying it. I’m only talking about the people in this article, not suggesting that complexity or nuance only exist in Israeli politics. I think you need to take on a ton of nuance to even understand Hezbollah’s behaviour at the Israeli border, let alone understand them as an organization.
Yes, we are in complete agreement that the same standard of nuance should be applied!
One of them is in charge of the police and border patrol. I don’t think it much matters if the average person doesn’t like them.
Neither of those things give him the power to do what he said or the influence to have it done. Both of those things matter.
Dude they’re doing it in the West Bank right now.
They’re doing what in the West Bank?
They’re not expelling people from the West Bank for the same reason as OP said: there’s nowhere for anyone to go. The settlers, including the two absolute pieces of shit in the article, are responsible for horrific crimes in the West Bank but it’s not the same thing as Gaza and it’s not the same thing they’re talking about.
They’re emptying whole villages with death threats. Care to guess how the villagers know the threats are credible enough that they need to leave?
I’m sure the conversation you want to be having is happening somewhere. You should find someone who’s defending what’s happening in the West Bank and say this to them.
It’s a serious expression of the government’s values. Just because those particular officials lack the power to do what they propose doesn’t mean their words are meaningless. If Bibi and his crew weren’t in favor of genocide, they’d be loudly condemning these assholes and doing whatever they can to remove them from office.
It’s not. I already wrote a very long post about why you’re wrong in this case, why those people are in those positions, and why there’s less reason to be afraid of those statements (though good reason to be outraged) than this article suggests.
The only pressure Biden feels is how to feign any concern about anything Israel is doing.
Bullshit. Leaving aside any potential humanitarian concerns, this whole thing is a massive headache for the Biden Administration.
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Are we sure we want him to act?
Might send more bombs.
While it’s nice to hear that Biden is ‘under pressure’ about this, I wish it took something less than obvious genocide and a near-global consensus that these are crimes against humanity for any sort of media to register it.
I honestly don’t understand why Biden is so hawkish on this; it’s not like giving Israel carte blanche will get him support from Republicans, and doing it really does appear to divide the left enough to hurt him politically.
Biden is hawkish on Israel because he remembers a version of Israel that doesn’t exist anymore. The stalwart of the Middle East is a shell of itself and it doesn’t want the rest of the world finding out. I know his age is a meme at this point but it’s worth pointing out here
It also explains why he treats the GOP the way he does, he’s remembering a much older Senate.
To be fair, he has had a surprising amount of success dealing with the GOP over the last few years.
I wonder what it’s like living in a functioning democracy.
It ain’t exactly bliss but it ain’t this either
Given what transpires about the US on the international news scene, I’m not sure putting that to a democratic vote would yield the result you expect, sadly.
In this case I don’t think it would hurt to have a popular vote decide (the next president)
well color me the shade of anal bleach
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Why is Biden under pressure? According to the guys on /politics this genocide is no problem and Biden is not responsible and we should all keep voting for him. Democrats are completely fine with doing straight up Genocide without even hiding it as long it’s not a Republican doing it.
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Nobody is asking Hamas how many Palestinians they are willing to sacrifice in their wish to erase Israel from the map.
Sorry, but last time I checked Israel is killing those civilians in throves. And don’t get me wrong I don’t sympathize with Hamas, but saying that the civilian Palestinian casualties are their fault is very much twisting the truth.
Are you also going to blame the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding there also Hamas fault? Are Hamas bombing civilian buildings in densely populated areas with oversized bombs?
Perhaps we should blame Hamas for the global warming too with your logic.
What did Hamas expect the response would be? Let me answer the rhetorical question: Mass civilian casualties. Why? Because they are embedded in the population. “Bombing civilian buildings” means little. Where are the military buildings they should bomb instead? Why is Hamas still holding hostages?
If you think that Israel should have the right to exist, what do you think their response should have been to the Oct 7th? Hamas has said they are proud of their terrorism, will commit more Oct 7ths, and want to wipe Israel from the map. Should Isreal just kick back and wait for Hamas to terror attack again? Would you expect that of any country in the world? So then, what response?
It’s a shame that people are dying. It is always the same when there is war, civilians suffer. Even dumber when the root of the conflict is over fucking fiction. Even dumber than that, if you can believe it, are people actually thinking there is a pure good or bad to any conflict. A pox on both their houses.
Probably because they’re more concerned about how Gaza isn’t allowed to have an economy right now.
They’re not even allowed hospitals.
Nah, they’re okay with that because they know it means more money in the pockets of their leaders in Qatar. Hamas never cared about the Palestinian people and they still don’t.
I’m confused. Isn’t Israel the one dropping the bombs?
Hamas is still lobbing missiles at Israel daily, and don’t forget, holding quite a few hostages. Like I said, I wonder how many Palestinians Hamas is willing to sacrafice.
You totally avoided my question. Who is bombing Gaza? Because I’m pretty fucking sure it isn’t Hamas
Ah, I see. Someone incapable of nuance. I’ll just block and move on. It’s like arguing with a kitchen table.
My man is so nuanced he can blame Hamas for the actions of Israel and can see how up is actually just the same as down if you’re all smart and nuanced about it
