Can someone explain to me why Americans seem so hostile towards Biden over Gaza all of a sudden?
US support for Israel goes back decades. America has been in bed with all sorts of dictators commiting heinous crimes and still is. Not to forget the illegal invasion of Iraq with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties or the long list of US war crimes revealed by WikiLeaks and largely indiscriminate drone strikes across the globe. Most of these seemed to elicit much harsher condemnation overseas while the US public appeared generally uninterested. So why does this conflict in Palestine in which the US isn’t even an active party suddenly evoke such an emotional response?
- Younger generations are less pro Israel.
- There’s a segment of liberals that view any victimized or oppressed group as morally superior regardless of context.
- Michigan specifically has a very high population of Muslim/middle eastern descent.
- It’s not that sudden, there’s been growing criticism and calling Israel an apartheid state for years. The recent escalation in hostilities just made it more newsworthy.
OK but republicans demanded help to Israel to help Ukraine, until they changed it up.
So it seems that although Biden may be bad, the only alternative is worse.
If you’re being punched in the gut, it’s not reassuring that the other option is going to use a bat instead.
The American left is furious at Biden for the same reason we’re angry at pretty much any President’s foreign policy. We’ve opposed most of the interventions and support for dictators that presidents in the latter half of the twentieth century up to today have engaged in. But we have never been the majority, and haven’t had the power to stop them. It’s important to remember that about a third of the US is composed or pretty reasonable, pro-peace social democrats. The problem is that another third are “moderates” that are okay with empire as long as we pretend we’re being nice, and the last third are maniacal religious fascists.
Mainly just due to the recency and severity of the conflict in Gaza, and the fact that it’s an election year. Americans never cared when Israeli soldiers routinely dehumanized, murdered, and raped Palestinians in small numbers here and there, but the widespread media coverage of the conflict in Palestine has helped shape public opinion to recognize the incredibly disproportionate response on the part of Israel to the Oct. 7 attacks.
Biden is reaffirming the US’s long-held stance on Israel, but it is a stance that is becoming less popular with many who disagree with what Israel is doing. Michigan in particular has a high population of Muslims who turned out in large numbers to oppose Biden, which is why this managed to become newsworthy.
I would also wager a good chunk of this narrative (certainly not all or even the majority, but a good chunk) is likely promoted by Republican-aligned groups who are using this momentum to discourage people on the fence from voting for Biden in the general to help secure a Trump win. Notably a lot of news coverage I’ve seen lately featured people confirming their plan to vote for Trump, rather than vote for no one, because of Biden’s stance on Israel.
Trump himself is remaining relatively tight-lipped about his stance on Israel during this election cycle, despite being a vocal ally of Netanyahu during his previous term, to try to keep the dialog focused on Biden. But it is expected he will continue support for Israel, or even escalate it, due to his previous amicable relationship with Israel and based on how much his voter base likes to dehumanize Muslims (blocking all Muslims from entering the US was an early campaign promise of his in 2016).
No. We cared. It’s just really hard to get anyone to look at the issue when the standard media line was, lol brown people terrorists.
Progressives who pay attention to international politics have been yelling from the rooftops about Israel’s Apartheid tactics for at least 2 decades.
and the fact that it’s an election year
It’s the only time moderate Democrats actually have to listen to progressives, leftists and anyone who isn’t a moderate. The discussions dying down after the elections isn’t by our choice, it’s just that the moderates stop engaging once they have what they need from us.
If only. No matter how much we shout, the only people that end up elected are moderates. But what is the alternative?
So why does this conflict in Palestine in which the US isn’t even an active party suddenly evoke such an emotional response?
Because the US is by all means an active party. The US is selling Israel weapons (including weapons Biden has been bypassing Congress to sell), defending them on the international stage and literally sent them aircraft carriers to prevent anyone in the region from taking action. People have been found guilty in the Numenberg trials for less and people aren’t liking the man who’s supposed to represent them doing these things.
Keeping others in the region from “taking action” is a good thing. The top priority in all of this for the US has been keeping it from escalating to a region wide conflict.
It also makes sense for America to not cut Israel off completely. If we did that, Netanyaho would turn to Russia who would love to have Israel in their orbit. Any leverage we have with Israel is dependent on aid and support.
Most of the big ticket weapons we sell them are guidance systems for precision guided bombs. They have plenty of dumb bombs, and would just use more of those, killing even more civilians.
Do I think the Biden administration is handling the situation well? No, I think we could be putting on a lot more pressure before risking Russia’s involvement with Israel. I just don’t think the situation is as simple as many people make it out to be.
Keeping others in the region from “taking action” is a good thing. The top priority in all of this for the US has been keeping it from escalating to a region wide conflict.
And who cares about the US’s top priority? The top priority for everyone should be to stop Israel’s genocide, not keep a facade of “peace” (read: US supremacy) in the region.
Guess you missed the huge anti Iraq war protests in the early 2000s. And the fact that we’ve been making Internet jokes about that and George Bush junior since forever.
Part is the fact that the Americans most likely to be upset by the violence in Gaza are the same that are likely to vote for him. And he’s being largely unreceptive to their criticism. In any other election, that would mean his base would probably just let his opponent win. There’s an obvious problem with that this time.
Basically, Biden is forcing the nation’s left wing to pick between showing their disdain for genocide overseas and stopping fascism to at home. It’s not a fair choice and people are bitter about it.
They’re choosing between the party that will not try to implement fascism while supporting Israel and the party that will try while also supporting Israel. Why would anyone think that the fucking Republicans won’t support Israel?
At this point it’s just a big red button.
I’m tired of being screamed at by moderates that I have to vote for their garbage candidate they picked in the primaries. It’s obvious at this point they expect me to endlessly compromise while they give up nothing.
It also assumes that you view the democrats as a credible counter to rising fascism… They’re currently trying to pass a fascist border bill, and literally using our military to aid in an ongoing genocide.
I don’t think there’s a choice to be made and I will not be voting for either.
If you are set on not voting in the presidential election, I would like to encourage you to still vote (if you didn’t already intend to) and just not vote on that question on the ballot, for two reaons:
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Local ballot measures and politicians are still quite relevant and your vote is still fairly impactful there relative to the federal election (depending on your state) and
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it sends a significantly stronger message to both parties that they are putting forward garbage candidates to vote and just abstain from the one question. Not voting is easy to mislabel as voter suppression by the opposition or any number of other misleading causes when voting, just not for Biden or trump is much more clear what you are mad about.
In the early 2000’s we weren’t as connected as we are now and people relied a lot more on cable/network news.
But also, and this is really important to understand, the civilian casualties from the Iraq war were over much larger areas, populations, and time. In the same time frame the rate of casualties was far lower. Coalition forces also did their best to avoid civilian casualties by not targeting hospitals, not kettling civilians, and certainly not doing a concerted bombing campaign with large bombs into highly populated areas.
A lot of what’s happening with the rate of civilian casualties is because the IDF has thrown all of those protections out the window. They’re specifically destroying the food, water, and medical infrastructure of Gaza. When people inevitably try to evacuate they can only do so further into Gaza. The IDF doesn’t allow them to evacuate through their lines into cleared areas. This means people can never actually get away from the fighting. Those are all large scale war crimes designed to increase the number of civilian casualties. But they aren’t removing troops credibly accused of war crimes from the area either. In fact they’ve shown no willingness to prosecute tactical level warcrimes such as shooting clearly marked journalists in a quiet area in broad daylight.
Just today the report landed on NPR radio that the IDF opened fire into a crowd waiting for food aid. The IDF is of course claiming the crowd was threatening. But we’ve known how to securely disperse food aid for decades. Those soldiers may very well have been threatened, but their officers set that situation up. Also of note is just how fast this gets out to the world in the era of social media.
And we haven’t even talked about the immense amount of war weariness in the US.
There were marches like, every other weekend about the invasion of Iraq even before the news came out that we were there over a lie. But Bush was president and it was like, “aww… look at the hippies… they think they’re helping… lol!”
Raddatz observed of the 5-year-old Iraq war, “Two-thirds of Americans say it’s not worth fighting, and they’re looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.”
And Cheney’s response: “So?”
It was honestly hard to protest when Obama was in office because there were so many frothing racists about that any public protests against the actions of the president would be joined by literal KKK members. But we wrote letters… oh boy did we ever write letters. Letter writing parties, phone banking about writing letters, sending out mailers with contact info for all of the local reps and higher ups to send letters to, including pre stamped envelopes and form letters to add your name to.
Nobody cared because Obama was so popular that there wasn’t really a question of his reelection. Biden is not that popular, the rare opportunity to use a major issue as leverage to threaten a reelection campaign, even if the result of his loss would be dire is why there is so much news about public opinion on Israel/Palestine.
In actuality, everyone knew W was full of shit. No one remotely informed believed for a second that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 as well as the only WMDs Saddam had were the nerve gas ones Reagan gave them to kill Iranians with. Only the media hadn’t worked that out instantly. Your myopic revisionism is very telling.
Can someone explain to me why Americans seem so hostile towards Biden over Gaza all of a sudden?
He proactively circumvented congress to sell Netanyahu weapons that he knew would be used for genocide.
Democrats can always find a lame procedural excuse when there’s something they ran on but don’t want to do, but when it’s something they want to do like enable genocide (and oh lordy do they ever), procedure and decorum evaporate in a puff of hypocrisy and convenience.
Because the genocide in Gaza is currently at an all time high? Israel is actively in the process of invading them, supported and defended fully by the US to the detriment of the international community?
America isn’t currently arming death squads in South America or where right now at the moment or you’d be hearing about that instead.
It’s like asking why are Americans talking so much more about trans rights lately when they’ve always been bad.
I need to know more about these South American death squads. Can you point me in the right direction?
It is 100% Russia’s divide and conquer strategy, the same one they used in 2016 to control the outcome of the presidential election.
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/11/17/russias-weaponization-of-antisemitism/
You’re being downvoted, but it’s true. At this point, everyone knows the dynamics of voting in a 2 party FPTP system. Anyone legitimately trying to deter people from voting for Biden at this point in time are actively pursuing a course of action that will lead to a Trump presidency. Other than clandestine Trump supporters, bots make the most sense.
To anyone else who just really really really hates the genocide in Gaza: Trump will take the money being given to Ukraine and instead give it to Israel. Under Trump, more Gazans will die.
Potential narrative or sentiment shift driven by bots in the wake of the upcoming election?
There’s definitely a lot of sentiment against him for what he’s done in regards to this of course but it’s seemed to have accelerated in an unnatural fashion.
“Everyone I disagree with is a bot and it is only I, the one with the correct opinions, who is a thinking human being who is also immune to propaganda”
Yeah, genocide sure is manufactured outage. I’m sure you’re one of those people who think you would’ve stood up to the nazis. In reality you stan the democrat party, which insists we work with republicans and which also loves funding genocide.
I wasn’t on Lemmy for the 2021 bombing campaign. Trying to look at people’s comment history on a new platform to see if they cared about it in the past is hilarious.
THIS is how you protest vote. Bravo Michigan Democrats. I hope they still vote for him in the general, but I’m still glad they’re making the DNC sweat.
Are people expecting a better response to this situation from Trump? I don’t see how people can expect him to be the better choice for most topics. Abstaining a vote for Biden in November is basically the same as voting for Trump
They refuse to be blackmailed into endorsing Genocide.
They expect Biden to stop supporting Genocide when tell him they are not going to vote for Genocide.
Don’t be surprised if Biden loses when he keeps up the Genocide.
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The strength of the uncommitted campaign “surprised” Biden’s campaign, the Times added, noting that the movement is now likely to spread to other states.
The White House contrition in Dearborn, where more than half of residents are Arab American, did not appear to quell criticism. “Uncommitted” beat Biden 56-40 in the city, winning 47 of the city’s 48 precincts with most of the votes counted, according to the Detroit Free Press.
“That’s a wow,” CNN’s John King exclaimed while the votes were still being counted Tuesday night.
“This is a place President Biden carried big time in 2020. This is key to his chances of defeating Donald Trump in Michigan,” he said, adding that the concentration of votes signals that Biden’s “big problem” is that “Muslim Americans who were critical, absolutely critical to his big margin in Michigan in 2020, are telling the president tonight that they are mad.”
If you’re wondering why anyone who claims to be a Democrat would lend their support to Trump; considering he will be much more hostile towards Hamas than Biden has been in his support for Isreal. It’s because Americans have a fundamental misunderstanding of how our democracy works. It’s not their fault either. Political science teaches us that voting is our voice and we should use our vote to express ourself. After seeing this dynamic play out every election cycle these type of issues always come up as a concerted effort to spoil the results. The idea that we can use the general election to express our opinion in this political climate is flawed since no one considers the candidates fit for office. No rational person. In the case of the presidency we need to use our vote as damage control because down ballot is much more crucial.
The downvote bots are out in force today. Downvoting anyone who remotely suggests that abstaining from voting or boycotting Biden helps Trump, who is polling higher, win the presidency. That, or they’re all accelerationist fundies who want to see Revelations happen.
Downvoting anyone who remotely suggests that abstaining from voting or boycotting Biden helps Trump
You realize they’re saying this on MSNBC, CNN and numerous other news sources available to people everywhere. Why do you want to repeat it here? Kinda seems like you’re just attempting to drown out the people who are saying “I don’t care. If you want my vote here are the terms.”
