He must think it’s the size of Mar-A-Lago
Another voice silenced by clearly powerful Australian Jewish interest groups.
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Yep they are a real scourge of democratic discourse.
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Bet those Arab voters in Michigan are feeling real smug right now.
Voting for the genociders.
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I was listening to Rachel Maddow yesterday with Jon Favreau on PodSaveAmerica , the first bit of political analysis I’ve tuned into since that fateful day. They were ruminating on the thought processes of Trump’s brain and how US policy might be fashioned over the next four years. Maddow suggested it might go something like this ;
Trump wakes up around ten , watches Fox , and then rolls into the WH sometime around midday. (This much we already know is true from his first term.) Then whatever ridiculous notion is de jour , he will expound on it to non-experts by banging on his phone exchange for the next couple of hours. Whoever he happens to speak to in those hours is likely to have an outsized role in the formulation of government policy for the day. The he will make it ‘official’ by posting it on Truth Social.
As comical as that sounds, it seems to be , by and large , what transpired yesterday before he delivered his latest masterpiece.
This from Peter Baker in today’s NYT ;
'Indeed, it seemed to be an idea that grew by the hour as the day went on. In the morning, before Mr. Netanyahu arrived at the White House to meet with Mr. Trump, aides to the president told reporters that it would take 15 years or more to rebuild Gaza after the destructive war between Israel and Hamas and that it would require working with partners in the region to find Palestinians a place to live temporarily.
By the afternoon, as he signed some executive orders, Mr. Trump told reporters that Palestinians would have “no alternative” but to move out of Gaza because it was just “a demolition site.” A little later, he welcomed Mr. Netanyahu to the Oval Office and went even further, saying he wanted “all of them” to leave and that Gazans should “be thrilled” to live someplace better that he expected Egypt and Jordan to provide.
Then at a formal news conference with Mr. Netanyahu in the East Room on Tuesday evening, he took it the final step, declaring not just that Palestinians should leave but that “the U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip” and rebuild it into a prosperous economic destination.’
Welcome to Strawberry Fields , where nothing is real.
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They were between a rock and a hard place. And frankly, as flashy as Trump’s statements look,…
- There’s no way Gazans will leave. You have to kill then first. Israel has been trying to for decades.
- Trump has all his pieces in place internally in the US to cause material and long lasting damage. But other than Israel, nobody will back him in this in the Middle East. Not the Saudis, not the Egyptians, and definitely not the Jordanians, many of whom are actually displaced Palestinians. So it’s not happening.
- The biggest thing Trump did internationally is that stupid pointless photo op with Kim Jong Un. Declaring Jerusalem as the capital was just him mouthing off.
As you’ve posted this sort of comment multiple times, I do want to point out just how in-bed Biden was with a bunch of Zionist American groups. He literally made a pledge to them prior to the 2020 election that he’d stick by them no matter what. And by god he did that.
I am not at all trying to create an equivalence between Biden and the Fascists, or that punishing Democrats for Biden’s Israel support by voting Fascism isn’t off-the-charts mental, but let’s also not pretend Biden’s non-actions on Israel for the sake of his domestic political capital didn’t burn a bunch of Muslim bridges.
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I think the biggest issue, or the one with the strongest lasting influence, with Trump’s first term, that nobody seems to notice, is the shifting of the Overton window.
It’s one thing for a nobody to float the idea, it’s another for the “leader” of the world’s most powerful country. Even if nothing else, it undermines the prestige and the status of that country, leading to other countries with expansionist ambitions to fill the void.
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Biden ≠ Harris, is the problem.
I’d agree with you, and I think somewhere else either @Limiescouse or @Arminius pointed out that Biden is a “true believer”, that the US needs to back Israel to the hilt, but I’d say that still doesn’t excuse the behaviour of those voters.
I’d criticise them the same way I criticise those “purist” “leftists”, for whom anything short of their whole idea is capitulation to the big bad capitalists, and therefore they would rather have a protest vote or vote for the even worse option. If you don’t like the party that best matches your views, join them and influence them towards your views. It’s as simple as that, really. Same goes here.
I need to find it now, but I think there was a pressure group that made it clear that they would not vote for Trump, but wanted to see meaningful concessions from Harris, and would withhold their votes until the very end (see contract negotiations with van Dijk and Salah for a parallel) until they could extract as much as they possibly could.
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I’m so fucking sick of these ignorant binary statements. You’ve said similar things multiple times. The Biden/Harris administration facilitated and armed the genocide that paved the way to where we are now. All previous US administrations have unequivocally supported the occupation and persecution of Palestinians. Obviously things were going to get worse under Trump. All of these can be true at the same time
Ignorant? Because you think you have the sole monopoly on “the truth” and perspective?
It’s funny, because from my perspective you have your head buried under the sand from being too emotionally involved in the issue, that anything that isn’t a miraculous solution that fits your ideals and narratives is automatically bad.
Yes I am emotionally involved as have friends there. Meanwhile you’re trying to win stupid arguments in the midst of ethnic cleansing
I am afraid that first point really isn’t true. Israel has been trying to kill Hamas and precursors, while being entirely willing to see civilians die. Expulsion really won’t be that hard at all. Cut off food and water (demolition site, don’t you know), open a gate out to Egypt, and they have already shown they will move themselves.
However, I just cannot see any neighbouring country having any interest. Jordan won’t touch them, they see their existing Palestinian minority as intensely problematic. Egypt doesn’t seem particularly interested, and it is the kind of decision that brings down Egyptian governments.
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And thereby demonstrating my point exactly.
Winning stupid arguments? It’s a stupid argument to point out how people’s attitudes and voting behaviours lead to exactly the effects you’re trying to avoid and therefore pointing out that there are alternatives?
Why should they? It’s the equivalent of saying England should take in the entire population of Wales because America wants all of Wales to build a Mar-a-Lago estate
I don’t seen any fundamental basis for them to either. Being a partner to ethnic cleansing is exactly why any acceptance would actually be dangerous for Egyptian leadership, the Cairo street simply won’t accept it.
The point I was emphasizing that this is beyond unilateral, it is outright solipsism
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Not wanting to speak of the irony of a human rights abusing regime doing the right thing (for once).
I do think Egypt will blink first. The promise of the millions of billions of aid etc will make them blink. History has already seen such short sighted decisions happen before.
I’m not fully au fait on the geography, but presumably there is a lot of open land in Egypt that could be used? Billions in aid, develop it for the Palestinians, jobs a good ‘un.
Except the Palestinians must have the right to self-determination! And the fundamental problem in all of this is they are being trampled on. They are not without guilt, but the asymmetric response by a much more powerful enemy is shameful.