The bare minimum expected of a leader of the American left, and a democratic socialist, should be a willingness to say “I endorse the conclusion of mainstream human rights organizations.” Why wouldn’t Sanders be willing to do that? He says that it doesn’t really matter “what you call it,” because it’s horrific. But clearly it does matter to Sanders, because he is making a choice not to use the same language as the human rights organizations. Why is he making that choice? He has not explained.
Sanders is right that the more important debate is about actions rather than language. But genocide is also the supreme crime against humanity, and it is so unanimously reviled that it makes a difference whether we use the term. For instance: there might be a debate over whether we should cut off weapons to a state that has “engaged in war crimes.” (How many? Are they aberrations or policy?) The Allied powers in World War II engaged in war crimes, and many Americans think war crimes can be justified in the service of a noble end. But there can be no debate over whether we should ever arm a state that has engaged in genocide. Genocide has no justification, no mitigation. If a state is committing it, all ties should be cut with that state.
Actually, we can see the difference in Bernie Sanders’ own policy response to Israel’s crimes. He told CNN that “your taxpayer dollars” should not go to support a “horror.” This is true. Sanders, to his credit, has repeatedly proposed a bill that would cut off a certain amount of weapons sales to Israel. Democratic opinion has so soured on Israel that Sanders’ bill attracted a record amount of Democratic support (27 senators, more than half the caucus.) But notably, Sanders’ bill only cuts off “offensive” weapons to Israel, leaving “defensive” weapons sales intact.
We might think that it’s perfectly fine to sell “defensive” weapons. Israel’s “Iron Dome” system, which U.S. taxpayers help pay for, protects the country against incoming missiles, and protection against incoming missiles is surely a good and noble thing. But notably, we have not bought Hamas its own “iron dome.” Or Iran. Or Russia. This is because we do not support the causes for which they fight. We understand in these cases that to help the “defense” is to help the “offense.” If Russia is protected from Ukrainian missiles, it will fight Ukraine more effectively. Likewise, if Israel is protected from Hamas rocket fire, but Gaza is not protected from Israeli missiles, the balance of arms is tilted toward Israel, and they can pulverize Gaza without Hamas being able to inflict similar damage in response.
But Hamas exclusively fires inaccurate unguided missiles into Israel. If the West funded a similar system for Russia, it would be used to defend the military and industrial targets that Ukraine is attempting to strike, not just civilians. In addition, the bulk of funding for Iron Dome was given at a time when, while Israel was justifiably criticised for breaches of international law, it was not committing a genocide, and it could be said that it was the better party to support. The other party, Hamas, has always been explicitly genocidal.
There is a lot of inertia here: it will take time (and would, even in the absence of AIPAC) for the atrocities to change minds.
Like Israel's Iron Dome does when Yemen or Iran attack?
How in the hell is the party committing ethnic cleansing, Apartheid and deliberately starving children the "better party to support"? And in the first place, who the hell said anything about supporting Hamas? There's a myriad of options other than supporting Hamas that don't entail supporting an Apartheid Nazi state.
Iran and Yemen aren't Palestine, so the problems we have with Israel's war against Palestine and Palestinians don't apply there. Unless, that is, you aren't on the side of Palestinians at all, but instead just want to see Israel defeated. But I chipped in to explain how it made sense for the US to fund Iron Dome, so we have to start from a point of view that makes at least some sense with respect to how the US saw the world then and wanting to destroy Israel is not that.
The situation in 2011 (when Iron Dome's development started) was not this one, so start there.
I would agree with the OP that funding Iron Dome now, for a genocidal state, would be a huge error.
They do. Israeli aggression is most intense in Palestine, but it's not exactly a saint with its other neighbors.
I do want to see Israel defeated because they keep fucking up everything for everyone else, especially but not only Palestinians, and because Apartheid states shouldn't exist. Your point?
It was. Israel has been deliberately keeping Gaza under chronic malnutrition and on the brink of economic collapse for two decades, and settlements constitute ethnic cleansing. The Gaza genocide is the worst single crime Israel has committed in its history, but it's far from the only one.
Israeli aggression towards Palestine is by far the most egregious because they have been performing a slow-motion annexation of it, and all the problems that come with that. Palestine had little ability to retaliate (though it did) so Israel's actions were grossly disproportionate. But this is not nearly so true with other states in the region, which have historically had a military and foreign policy posture of wanting Israel's complete destruction, and made strikes, wars and statements to that effect.
As far as our own geopolitical attitudes in the West are concerned, support for Israeli attacks on Iran has historically been an easy calculation to make because of how disastrous it would be for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. You can see this in the rhetoric now where even those who condemn Israel for attacking Iran recently, and condemn Trump for dismantling the one thing that seemed likely to keep Iran nuke-free, say that it nevertheless has to remain the goal.
My point is that you (and other people in this thread) seem motivated more out of a desire to see the destruction of the state of Israel than out of a desire for justice and a world free of ethnic cleansing.
I won't disagree that Israel has been breaking international law for decades and other countries should have been more forceful about that. That doesn't mean that helping to protect Israeli civilians from rocket attacks was the wrong thing to do.
Setting aside that that's not at all true, what's wrong with opposing a state committing and built on Apartheid and ethnic cleansing? Do you think the appropriate response to these actions is to do nothing?
How the fuck does that lead to supporting Israel against Iran when Iran has been nothing if not cooperative with the international community on the subject? Nobody, literally nobody other than Netanyahu himself thinks Iran is trying to build nukes. Also why would Iran having nukes be more disastrous than Israel having them?
Because?
And do you not see how that "protection" directly supports Israel's subjugation of Palestinians?
This is blatantly false - most Western assessment seem to have been that (after Trump unilaterally ended the deal) Iran was enriching way beyond what is necessary for civilian use.
Israel, despite its faults, is a democracy. Its genocidal ambitions have been restricted to Palestine - unlike Iran's. Israel also already has nukes (probably) - this question is not one of the lesser evil.
Because they state outright they want to see Israel destroyed.
"Directly" is wrong. It indirectly helps Israel's illegal actions against Palestinians - and that difference between direct and indirect help is the key to understanding this.
Haven't Yemen and Iran effectively debunked this claim? The missile shield is good at knocking down the odd munition from Lebanon or Syria, but it collapses in the face of a coordinated, continuous salvo by a sophisticated attacker.
What effectively curtailed the Israel-Iran ten day war was the consistency with which Iran's bombs penetrated Israel's defenses. As soon as the Israelis realized Iran could keep hitting back, they signed a ceasefire.
The Nakba of 1947 was a genocide by definition.
Subsequent military campaigns to brutalize Palestinians in the West Bank - via incremental land grabs and assassinations of political opposition - and in Gaza - via strategic assassinations along with restricting the import of durable goods and to impose a "calorie count" intended to shrink the population - were de facto genocides played out over decades.
What the current Israeli government has done is so nakedly and categorically genocidal, even to the point of Israeli politicians explicitly advocating for genocide in open debate, has removed the ability of Western supports to equivocate and hedge.
But the modern Palestinian State has existed under a policy of intentional ethnic cleansing for decades.
The only inertia is Zionism. And you're not going to cause Zionists to change their minds now. Not when they have been working towards this moment for sixty years.
Either the Israeli State is dismantled or the killing will continue unabated. The notion that this war will end once rational minds prevail is the same naive optimism that kept the US in Iraq for 13 years and Afghanistan for 23.
The decisions around whom to support in 2011 are not based on what was going on in 1948.
Your reply takes such a one-sided view that I'm not sure there's much point in having an extended discussion. I don't support Israel's genocide against Palestinians, but I also refuse to view the history of the conflict starting in 1948 and ignoring Arabs' role in it, and do not support the dismantling of Israel as a state, which would itself be ethnic cleansing on a greater scale than anything we have yet seen there.
Opposing the genocide of Palestinians by supporting a fresh ethic cleansing of Jews is abhorrent.
You sound normal, you should avoid touching grass for a bit. Extreme viewpoints and black and white thinking are the spice of life!
Being extremely against apartheid isn't being extreme.
I didn't see any comments about that
The Palestinian key is the Palestinian symbol of homes lost in the 1948 Nakba, when more than half of the population of Mandatory Palestine were ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias as part of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, and were subsequently denied the right to return
It is a symbol that shows up at every Palestine Protest. It was at the heart of The Great March of Return in 2018, a peaceful protest march out of Gaza that ended with Israelis slaughtering hundreds of protesters. The Nakba was been - until Oct 7th, 2023 - as central to the Palestinian understanding of their history as the Holocaust was for the Jews.
Might as well start waving the flag of the Russian Federation and Imperial Japan, while you're at it.
Hamas target military bases by calculating the projectile trajectory.
Ah yes, very calculated
Hamas' rockets generally can't even hit a town-sized target. Many fall within Gaza or on farmland.
What happened to these L nerds?
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/b12gtgugr
Are you using an incident in which four people were killed in an attack which also hit a kibbutz and "a building near an outpost" to argue that Hamas' rocket attacks are, overall, accurate?
Literally nobody, including Hamas, thinks that Hamas is able to launch accurate strikes. Then Hamas leader Khalid Mishal implicitly agreeing that, in 2014, Hamas did not have this capability.
Israel should not build their houses near military bases then. Human shields.
Hamas rockets are more accurate than Israeli F35s
I asked a pretty easy question. The fact that you don't want to answer it says it all: you know as well as everyone else that Hamas' attacks are indiscriminate, but whether because of the recent ethnic cleansing by Israel, or because of longer-standing views on the conflict, you are only willing to condemn one party.
Maybe you can use this perspective to help realise why your political leaders are also only willing to properly condemn one party.
You did not ask a question you pivoted because you got caught out.
Hamas rockets make far less civilian casualties than Israeli F35 jets. That is a fact. Are you denying it?
I'll give you a straight answer after you give me one :) Here's the question again so you don't have to go digging:
Rockets is general has high failure rate