Interesting. Most liberals I know already agree with that sentiment without having to be told.
Yet the guy who says this shit is the liberal choice for president: “Folks, were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world that was safe.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-alludes-disagreements-with-israels-netanyahu-2023-12-12/
That comes with the boldest admission I’ve ever seen, that we as the entire rest of the world are uniformly unwilling to stand by and protect the Jewish people in our communities and countries. Fuck that. No, we must protect our Jewish neighbors, we must be willing to take in Jewish refugees of antisemitism. We must take it upon ourselves be the place where Jews are safe. Saying Israel is the source of Jewish safety is a fucking cop out and it’s a disgusting one at that.
But if past performance is any indication, it’s also true.
There are lots of marginalized groups that do not have the benefit of having a homeland country that are continuing to survive. Maybe we were more barbaric in the past, and there’s certainly still antisemitism to root out, but I don’t agree with the take that countries couldn’t protect their own Jewish populations.
There are no other groups that had 2/3rds of their population in Europe and almost half their worldwide population systemically murdered, while the world refused ships full of Jews and had hard quotas on how many Jews were allowed in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
Should these countries protect their population? Yes. Did they? Maybe their own. But they sure didn’t protect Jews in the rest of Europe. Did the US have a duty to protect German citizens? Do we today? What has actually changed?
What total horse shit. Mark Zuckerberg’s safety is in no way conditioned on the existence of Israel.
But Biden isn’t a liberal (in conventional US usage anyway) and I doubt he’d describe himself as one. He’s an establishment centrist if there ever was one.
He’s a neoliberal Clintonite. He’s in the most right wing part of even that right wing form of liberalism, but still a neoliberal, which is the DNC default kind of liberalism and has been since 1992.
this is another meme using the European/PolSci definition of Liberals, meaning classic/neoliberal, as in ‘capitalists’. Definitely confusing and generally wrong in a modern US context.
In most sane countries Liberals include the US Republican party
Source: My rectum
Your rectum seems to have a grasp of what liberalism means, which makes sense since it sees shit all the time
Not necessarily. It’s genocide because they’re being specifically targeted for their race, religion, ethnic group, or other genetic or cultural characteristics. Which they absolutely are. If you lock the doors at rock concerts and kill everyone in attendance it’s just mass murder.
It’s genocide because their culture is slowly getting wiped out. Genocide happens not only in the giant open air concentration camp called Gaza, but also in the West Bank, where the Palestinians are supposedly living in peace with the Israelis. Check out Anna Baltzers documentary about her experience in the West Bank. She went there as a sceptic upon hearing from friends about gruesome stories of how the Israelis treat Palestinians.
Video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_MDC2Gty4I&si=DWDaLQmvkl2Tv27a
“just” feels weird here, idk why
Imo the just feels weird because mass murder shouldn’t be a “just”. It should be somewhat near a penultimate, but compared to genocide…
Genocide = mass murder + the attempt to wipeout a characteristic people.
So “just” mass murder could be considered one step less worse than genocide.
No disagreement at all, still feels like we shouldn’t be applying that word to something so severe.
Religion is just an excuse to get people on board. This is a territory war, religion is just the thing dividing the two sides, but this is not about religion or race, this is about land and power.
Is subculture not a form of culture?
It’s not a genocide because there’s no attempt to eradicate a whole people.
to add further. muslims are not a race.
?!
That’s illegal to say.
Not at all. In fact, far from being risky, it’s the received wisdom here on Lemmy. I will get far more downvotes for merely questioning the framing of it as a genocide than will OP.
That’s because genocide denial is usually frowned upon by people with fully functioning brains.
I can’t believe the Israeli government of all entities drank the fascist Kool-Aid.
They went aggressive defense, after the effects of WW2. They built an impressive machine to both keep themselves safe (by all means necessary) and hunt down Nazis who fled into hiding.
Unfortunately, they ran out of targets, on the nazi front, and really pissed off their neighbours. Rather than risk de-escalating, they’ve gone all-in.
The intergenerational changeover, and the political games that entailed lead to the current situation.
Stare too long into the abyss, and the abyss will stare back into you.
and hunt down Nazis who fled into hiding.
Give it a break. One of Israel’s staunchest allies since the start was West Germany - which enthusiastically co-operated with Israel while Israel was fully aware that it’s intelligence services were jam-packed with nazis. Israel only hunted the nazis that were convenient to hunt.
Birds of a feather and all that.
The ones working for west Germany, as well as America weren’t hiding, they were useful. Their targets were the one who were useless alive for anything other than getting revenge against.
The key is they had a good excuse to build a highly effective surveillance and infiltration system. It also was/is skilled at getting their hands dirty on foreign soil, while keeping the mess contained. At the time, they have a worthy target. As time went on, the number of targets dropped. The system in place was then turned to other uses.
I always see historical fallacy being used to suit their own biases and frankly I am getting tired of it. While many Nazis and collaborators weren’t prosecuted, and they should have been, did West Germany still have laws prosecuting Jews and other minorities after the war? The fact that you will be prosecuted for doing Nazi salutes and symbols in Germany says a lot. Post-war Germany is not the same as Nazi Germany as evidence show, for crying out loud.
I know Lemmy is as left leaning as Reddit, but as a left leaning minority myself, these shoehorning and virtue signaling from the left is cringey af.
did West Germany still have laws prosecuting Jews and other minorities after the war?
Funny you should mention that…
After the war, discrimination against Roma continued all over Europe. The courts in the Federal Republic of Germany determined that all measures taken against Roma before 1943 were legitimate official measures against persons committing criminal acts, not the result of policy driven by racial prejudice. This decision effectively closed the door to restitution for thousands of Roma victims, who had been incarcerated, forcibly sterilized, and deported out of Germany for no specific crime. The postwar police authorities took over the research files of the Nazi regime, including the registry of Roma who had resided in the Greater German Reich, and police harassment and discrimination continued.
Only in late 1965 did the West German compensation law explicitly acknowledge that the acts of persecution that took place before 1943 were racially motivated, creating eligibility for most Roma to apply for compensation for their suffering and loss under the Nazi regime. By this time, many of those who became eligible had already died. In March 1982 Federal Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, formally stated that German Roma had been victims of genocide.
I guess it’s true what they say… underneath the liberal 1st world pretensions it’s still the same old Europe.
Let’s be clear on one thing… the nazis were not some “aberration” - the predatory and parasitic socio-economic systems that enabled and nurtured them is still very much alive and kicking in (so-called) “western civilization.”
Interesting, I hadn’t realised that. Thanks for sharing. It did take a long time for Germany to come to terms with their past. It was the children and grandchildren of the war generation who fully acknowledges and admit of the atrocities. But even so, that hasn’t really got to do with Germany somehow influencing Israeli state’s policies, unless there is evidence to show for.
It did take a long time for Germany to come to terms with their past.
Have they?
Germany is still controlled by the same kind of capitalists that funded the nazis to protect them from working-class revolt. Germany is still controlled by the same kind of politicians that gave up power to the nazis out of political expediency. Germany went from being a fascist state to enabling another pretty darn obvious one - Israel.
No, I think Germany has no more “come to terms with it’s past” than any other colonizer state.
But even so, that hasn’t really got to do with Germany somehow influencing Israeli
Germany aiding and abetting a genocidal white supremacist settler-colonial state has got nothing to do with this?
Nothing at all, eh?
Germany is still controlled by the same kind of capitalists that funded the nazis to protect them from working-class revolt. Germany is still controlled by the same kind of politicians that gave up power to the nazis out of political expediency. Germany went from being a fascist state to enabling another pretty darn obvious one - Israel.
Another leftist overreaching and attribution bias that make my eyes roll everytime. Just because a society is capitalist it doesn’t mean they’re Nazis. Norway and Denmark are capitalists albeit have very strong social protections and regulations. Germany is similar. Fascism has a specific meaning than just “capitalist”. Just because you don’t like something, you just can’t call it “fascist.” Germany isn’t perfect but by no means they are still Nazis or fascists. They accepted refugees en masse, second to Sweden. How does that sound like Nazi to you?
Germany aiding and abetting a genocidal white supremacist settler-colonial state has got nothing to do with this?
And this is another case of oversimplifying complex issues and requires a lot of unpacking. It’s a chicken or egg scenario. There are those who agreed to the creation of Israeli state, but then there are those who hasn’t-- which led to the conflict as it were now. Israel did not start as a fascist state-- they have been ruled by a left-wing party in the first half of their existence. But tensions and refusal by Arab states to recognise Israel put Israelis into a siege mentality. This created a cycle of violence as Israel turned to become more vengeful and right-wing due to the past conflicts and invasion. Eventually, and at the very least, Arab states came to terms that Israel is here to stay. However, more radical Muslim Arab paramilitary factions are still prodding Israel. The latest of that prodding is from Hamas.
Now, of course, as the UN secretary general said, Hamas violence did not start in a vacuum. Israel had been treating Palestinians as second class citizens. But it’s also because Israel have developed a siege mentality for aforementioned reasons, which they retaliate in return but also makes Palestinians seek vengeance in return as well. And the cycle of revanchism continues. “An eye of an eye makes us all blind”, and that is precisely what is happening. This, however, does not excuse Hamas attack on October 7, nor Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
However, even with all that, Israel is still far from being a fascist in spite of the military supremacy in the region. Being far-right or right-wing does not mean they’re fascist. They still have election and Netanyahu’s party is actually unpopular and clings dearly to forming coalitions. Israel is still open to negotiations and as a matter of fact-- before the Hamas attack in October 7, there was meant to be a deal to be signed between Saudi and Israel for closer cooperation in exchange to unequivocally giving up occupied settlements in West Bank. But Hamas derailed that at the last minute with their attack. I bet you did not hear that? That being said, Israel is far from being a fascist because they still allow elections and decorum (until debatably recently which I will get to that later). Fascists don’t do that as they would limit free and fair elections. Fascism has more specific criteria than just being capitalist or anything you don’t like. I suggest you read on Umberto Eco’s 14 characteristics of fascism instead of just throwing labels.
While I do not agree with providing Israel more aid (they received more than enough in all these years), attributing Germany as still “nazi” or “fascist” simply because they help Israel does not make Germany “fascist”. And by the way, the FT article you linked is one month and a half old, before Israel’s fascistic behaviour in invading Gaza strip. So, Germany gave aid to Israel before the invasion of Gaza so they could not have known how Israel would do. This does not make Germany fascist. You could accuse these countries too as fascist for supporting Israel for being invaded. Throwing labels willy nilly on something you don’t like and don’t know the meaning, dilutes the meaning and significance of the term. It’s not intellectually productive and is lazy. This is what Slavoj Zizek have railed against with liberals and left just throwing buzzwords.
The trick is to wait until the abyss stares back, and to smile at it.
EDIT: My bad, I thought this was from another Israel Palestine thread I roped myself into.
I feel bad for everyone involved though.
Depressingly, that sums up what the Israeli intelligence/security did.
That tactic, sadly, seems to work. Worked for Russia too. Not a moral prescriptive observation, but a descriptive one.
The whole point of the state of Israel is to have an ethnostate - at the minimum, apartheid, at the maximum, genocide - which is why there is a huge split among Jewish people worldwide as to whether or not be Zionists.
They drank that particular strain of Kool-Aid back in 1949.
Welcome to 1995. You’ll catch up.
Funny. I looked at my calendar and thought it was 1356 with the way you all are talking and acting.
You’ll learn to take a step back and view situations objectively one day, far in the future, when you grow up. Perhaps 2095.
Thou hast a pickled cabbage for a brain, you poxxed simpleton.
Fucking retard. 🤦🤡
Yeah, it’s gonna take a lot longer for you to grow up than I thought.
Have fun inhaling the fumes from your clown makeup though. Goes a long way toward explaining why you think the way you do.
Lol. fucking pedo. You’re such a creepy molester.
Also, liberals… Israel has been doing it since 1949.
This meme was made in Gimp! I’d recognize that centered drop shadow anywhere!
Wait what liberals are saying that it isn’t genocide???
No, lol
They all read they one same damn bookThat’s crazy, religious people actually reading their holy book? An unseen phenomenon for Americans.
Nice religion americans whould love it 💀🤣
I like this red - green allience
Removed by mod
Mate if they orchestrated a complete mass murder in an instant, absolutely no one would be able to defend it. This way, people get to just say “well, it’s war”.
It’s not “large numbers of civilian casualties”
It’s “the VAST majority of deaths are innocent civilians”. It’s like if Texas kidnapped 5 random citizens to kill every time someone was given the death sentence. Would you say that’s acceptable because it’s just “collateral damage”?
This is by design on the part of Hamas though. It doesn’t excuse the situation, but it does make it more complicated especially with regard to intent, which has to matter when considering charges of genocide.
Oh yeah, I totally believe that Hamas is planning where Israel drops their thousands of bombs, and not an AI named ‘The Gospel’
It’s all Hamas’ fault. Everything. Israel is totally innocent of their countless of war crimes
I don’t know that one negative makes the other right. They can both be culpable of fabricating this situation to feed larger interests. IDF is reeling in Bibi’s dirty war and Hamas is Iran’s puppet to destabilize the region. They are all shitheads, as history had shown. I don’t know why leftys have coraled around defending Hamas when it’s the Palestinian people suffering the brunt of their actions.
Hamas is Iran’s puppet to destabilize the region.
Not saying I don’t believe you, but do you have sources or more info?
My reason for “defending” Hamas is because of the scale of destruction (Israel is systematically destroying their entire country vs homemade mortars made by Hamas) and the intent (Israel wants to have the entire land to themselves by almost any means necessary vs Hamas wants to fight their oppressors) so I place much more blame on Israel for killing civilians than Hamas. Both are bad, sure. Everyone knows that, every innocent death is an absolute and heartbreaking tragedy. Hamas has little control of the situation tho, while Israel has the third largest military in the world. Who do you think is more responsible?
Oh, look… the White Supremacism Fan Brigade is blaming genocide on the victims of genocide again.
Of course, the liberals who run Lemmy.world will ban me if I call you a fascist or a white supremacist… because reasons.
You don’t think two things can be true at the same time? Hamas absolutely are using human shield tactics, and have been for as long as they’ve been in existence. There are articles on the Internet showing how and why they do this years back.
AND at the same time, Israel is using that fact to bomb much more indiscriminately than they could be.
Hamas absolutely are using human shield tactics,
Oh… are the white supremacists still clinging to this lie? Let’s see who it really is that is using Palestinians as “human shields,” shall we?
White supremacist? Bro we’re talking about two Middle Eastern countries.
Moreover, you showing when Israelis have used human shields doesn’t even remotely prove or disprove anything Palestine has done. So respectfully, no.
we’re talking about two Middle Eastern countries.
Oh… are you going to pretend that you didn’t know Israel is a white supremacist settler-colonialist state - and always has been?
Let’s see how long that works for you, eh?
you showing when Israelis have used human shields
The only hard evidence we have for the use of “human shields” is their use by the fascist side.
So - extremely disrespectfully - put up or shut up.
All of these posts are so weird to me about arguing that Israel is commiting genocide. No one seems to mention or care that over and over again Hamas has admitted and encouraged genocide against Israel. But they’re smaller so I guess it’s okay?
One is a terrorist group. The other famously self-describes as “the only democracy in the Middle East”.
Do you really think we should have equal expectations?
Genocide: the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
It’s a genocide. Your point is they could probably be more efficient and obvious about the civilian murder. Therefore, it’s not a genocide.
Your point is moronic.
I think their point is that: of course it’s not the intention to wipe them out, because if it was, it would already have been done on Oct 8th. Which isn’t a terrible argument.
Hamas has stated it wants to genocide Israel, and their actions match that. Indiscriminate rocket fire, suicide bombing, invading etc. essentially everything they can do.
By contrast Israel has not (officially) said they want to genocide Palestine, and they aren’t using even a fraction of the weapons at their disposal. Personally, I see their actions more as angry and sloppy. What’s the alternative, that they’re going to kill hundreds of people a day for the next years? That’s ridiculous.
of course it’s not the intention to wipe them out, because if it was, it would already have been done on Oct 8th.
…
Unless they wanted to commit a genocide while maintaining just enough plausible deniability to have people like you and I debating their intentions while it happens.
In which case it would look… exactly how it looks. Crazy, that.
You could say that about literally every war
Right. Because if their goal was to wipe out all Palestinians, they would of course put all of their efforts and resources towards that without letting international politics affect what they do and how they do it… /s
“Everyone warcrimes actually” is a pretty weak take.
And Nazi Germany could have used poison gas to clear the western USSR of it’s population so much faster - so I guess there was nothing genocidal about Nazi Germany, eh apologist?
Oooo, now do Ukraine
Aren’t the Ruskies the ones invading them and kidnapping their children and such?
Exactly. “Leftists” refuse to acknowledge that Russia is doing genocide in Ukraine.
We do?
Not necessarily, definitely not generally. But the party “Die Linke” in Germany ( basically translates to the left/leftists) has some strongly russophilic currents. I’d wager that’s the case in more countries than just Germany.
I don’t really think that’s true, lol. It may just be my own bias as a leftist that heavily condemns Russia’s invasion, but the vast majority of leftists condemn Russia invading, with some also condemning NATO’s historical treatment of the Russian Federation, leading to an unjust invasion in the first place.
It’s kind of like people that say the US government caused 9/11 by being an absolute villian on a global stage, especially with respect to the Middle East. That’s not saying 9/11 was justified, but that the US government shouldn’t have held their foreign policy the way they have for centuries in the first place.
Maybe I’m blind, but I really don’t see anyone saying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is justified.
Leftists are anti-Imperialism and Anti-Colonialism as a rule, so being pro-Imperialism is a decidedly not leftist take.
Yup, as a leftist Russia is an imperialist capitalist country doing the terrible things those countries do. These conflicts will always occur until we move on from this system. Every capitalist imperialist hegemon engages in these conflicts. Where I seem to agitate people is I don’t make exception for this for other hegemon countries like the US and alliances like NATO, as if this had no historical context and was inevitable.
I’m just basing this on what I see all over hexbear and lemmygrad in particular. I have, in fact, gotten a ban for “genocide denial” on hexbear for suggesting that Russia is perpetuating genocide against the Ukrainian people. The absolute irony.
I wouldn’t call those people lefties. That’s more like some twisted tankie ideology, based on some absurd notion that Russia is still communist.
Russia has done some truly horrific acts to the people of Ukraine, but isn’t being classified as genocide by human rights groups.
Isn’t the kidnapping of Ukraines children count as a cultural genocide or something?
Certainly a war crime.
I see, I just want to state that there’s an odd use of terminology you’ve used. I’m assuming that you’re referring to marxists, socialist, etc, as the “leftists”, I just wish to point out that they absolutely HATE liberals, like the Democratic Party and such. The liberals actually support Ukraine while those leftists are more “eh” on the subject.
You keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means. https://youtube.com/watch?v=L9n77DPJ7AE
What’s happening in Ukraine, Gaza, as well as countless other places, are frigging tragedies, but it’s not genocides.
There is actually a genocide being perpetrated presently, but as nobody wants to piss of China nobody’s talking about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide
I don’t think it’s pedantic to point out that is saying there is a “risk” of genocide. It’s not saying there is a genocide.
Liberals then: 🇺🇦 Slava Ukraine! 🇺🇦
Liberals now: 🇵🇸 Free Palestine! 🇵🇸
Liberal’s stock portfolios: Lockheed, Raytheon…
Cool it with the antisemitic remarks.
I guess if you don’t support Isreal you’re an antisemite. Does that mean if you don’t support Palestine you’re an antiislamist?
Wat…
Big Lebowski reference I think?
Nope my b it’s American Psycho
You don’t seem to know what antisemitic means.
